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THE EDITORIAL 


A STUDY IN EFFECTIVENESS 
OF WRITING 


BY 
LEON NELSON FLINT 


PROFESSOR OF JOURNALISM IN 
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS 


D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK LONDON 
1924 


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AN 


MY STUDENTS OF EDITORIAL Hee a 
WRITING WHO HAVE ASPIRED aa 
TO DO THEIR WORK IN THE — ' ie 
PROFESSIONAL SPIRIT, AND TO 


i 1HOSE EDITORS WHOSE ADMIR- : 
ABLE EXAMPLE HAS POINTED | 
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; INTRODUCTION 


In order to invite consideration of the editorial in 
all its aspects this book contains a brief historical 
sketch, as well as chapters on typography and on edi- 
torial responsibility ; but the controlling purpose of the 
discussion has been to achieve practical helpfulness 
for the editorial writer, or the student, who really tries 
to carry his message beyond the threshold of his 
reader’s mind, rather than leaving it on the doorstep. 

- Both the country editor who is trying to climb the 
ladder of editorial effectiveness, with hands full of 
distracting duties in the news, advertising, circulation, 
and printing departments of his paper, and the metro- 
politan editor who struggles upward, arms bulging 
with original documents, reference books, and con- 
flicting news reports, would get along better if they 
took pains to observe the ladder. It behoves ladder 
climbers to dispense with hobbles and blinders. 

This book deals with the ladder. Both the vet- 
eran, on the rung near the top, and the college youth, 
placing a tentative foot on the lowest crosspiece, need 
to know what they are about. Anything that is worth 
doing at all—particularly an art such as editorial writ- 
ing—is worth a preliminary examination as to its pur- 
poses, possibilities and methods. And, as the years 

vii 


vill INTRODUCTION 


of devotion to it lengthen into decades, it is worth 
frequent reéxaminations for overlooked opportunities 
and improvement of technique. 

There is always another rung waiting for the editor 
who can see it and get his foot on it. 

Several years of experience as an editorial writer, 
and as many more in work with students ambitious to 
become editorial writers, have gone into this book. 
The college student—and anyone, for that matter—. 
will get benefit out of the presentation of a method 
of doing things that sets him to developing a better 
one. A college education or its equivalent is about to 
become a prerequisite for editorial work. And since 
the equivalent is harder to get than the college educa- 
tion itself, it is safe to say that the editor of the future 
will be a college graduate—not a raw, unweathered 
A. B., of course, any more than the chief counsel for 
a corporation will be an unseasoned LL. B. or the 
superintendent of a hospital, a green M. D.,—but a 
man who, from the time he starts out, has a college 
education working for him. 

The experienced editor, while he may be impatient 
with “methods” in general, has too much interest in 
his means of livelihood and too much respect for his 
profession and too keen a vision of his responsibilities, 
to despise utterly fruits of experience offered by others 
in the same vocation. The overloaded country editor, 
tempted to get rid of the weight of an editorial column, 
welcomes some knack of juggling it in the pack so that 
it chafes less. The editor in the city, haunted by the 
ghostly columns of white space to fill, is relieved by 


INTRODUCTION ix 


even a weak ray of light that makes it easier to dis- 
pel the apparition. 

While it is interesting to consider editorial writing 
historically, and tremendously important that its ethical 
aspects be regarded, the writer of this study of the 
editorial admits that for him the greatest fascination 
lies in the study of technique—materials, aims, organ- 
ization, style. In short, results. 

From the news standpoint and the eendpaint of 
broad newspaper policies, ethics is undoubtedly the 
most vital subject in journalism. The advance of the 
whole American press hinges on progress at the 
strategic point where honesty and accuracy and de- 
cency and fairness and responsibility and devotion, are 
confronted by entrenched opposition. But from the 
point of view of the editorial, this phase of the struggle 
is relatively less critical. Rather, the ground to be 
won in the editorial field is that of interest, respect, 
confidence, influence,—to some degree matters of 
ethics, but under present conditions, much more to be 
regarded as matters of psychology and technique. 

On these matters emphasis has been placed in this 
book in the hope that the procedure outlined will be 
considered in the spirit in which it is offered—as 
merely suggestive of methods that have helped some 
young writers in their work and that many successful 
editors of newspapers and magazines, consciously or 
unconsciously, deliberately or spontaneously, are using 
every day. 

ie Nake: 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


J I. DEVELOPMENT OF THE EDITORIAL COLUMN . 


¥ II. WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH OF THE EDITORIAL 


w III. THE EpirorR AND His READERS . 
IV. MATERIALS FOR EDITORIALS . 
Mee deDITORIAL PURPOSES... (ui ss) s 
VI. BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 5 A 
V VII. THE MANNER oF SayInG IT. . 
VIII. PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS . 
IX TyYPOGRAPHICAL APPEARANCE . . 
Pemba eOITORIAL PAGER? 4) av. 


XI. EpITORIAL RESPONSIBILITY .. . 


XII. THe Epitor’s ROUTINE AND READING 


XIII. ANALYZING EDITORIALS. ... . 


PAGE 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


Diverse Styles of Editorial Headings and Typography, 
with Varying Widths of Columns . 

Portion of the Editorial Page of the English Thun. 
derer”’ 

Greeley’s Feriots Signed Editorial to hich hess 
Replied . 

Beginnings of a seine. Editorial pee’ in the First 
Number of the Springfield Daily Republican 

Attractive Make-up of Editorial Pages in a Weekly 
Magazine Nan ene AON) “Seas NS PETIA ey Oe 

Contrast in Reporter’s sith Editor’s Sources of Material 

some Newspapers Have ‘“‘ Platforms” in Their ‘‘Flags”’ 

A Page in which Communications Are Given the Place 
of Honor Wes 

In Mourning for President Eahoate 

Diagram on Writing an Editorial . s 

A Conservative Page Containing Only Editorial Weis: 

An Attractive Page with Carefully Edited Features and 
Special Columns . 

One of the Most Widely Quoted #Goltmitis i ran rite 
o’ Type or Two” : 

Wide Columns Adopted to Make the Pave Bones ae 
Inviting ”’ 

An Editorial Page Peatainate a ‘Grek Variety of Wee 


rials. 
Xili 


PAGE 


IOI 
135 
185 
204 
216 


225 


a 


THE EDITORIAL 


CHAPTER I 


DEVELOPMENT OF THE EDITORIAL COLUMN 


The editorial—the published expression of the opin- 
ions of an editor—is one of the many mediums 
through which men have satisfied their instinct to 
spread ideas. Storm centers of thought furnish its 
natural habitat. ¥ When men have become agitated 
about questions of government, ethics, religion, art, 
science, and the like, they have sought publicity for 
their opinions, and, when facilities permitted, have 
found expression through editorials in newspapers and 
other publications. 

Editorial writing has its own distinctive character- 
istics of form and function and its own significance 
in human affairs, justifying its consideration apart 
from other types of writing. 

Nothing but News in the First Papers.—The 
earliest newspapers were not characterized by opinion. 
They were vehicles for news. They were crude at- 
tempts to satisfy wholesale the curiosity of human be- 
ings about events affecting their welfare or touching 

I 


THE EDITORIAL 


their humanity. The News Letters of England, writ- 
ten by correspondents at important centers to persons 
in the provinces, have been pointed to as showing the 
early prevalence of opinion in journalism. It would 
be almost as reasonable to claim that the first news- 
paper was issued by Moses from his office of publica- 
tion on Mt. Sinai, and was entirely editorial matter— 
persuasive, hortatory, and dictatorial. The News Let- 
ters were not newspapers. They merely form one of 
the precursors of the newspaper, as do the bellmen and 
the Acta Diurna of the Romans. When the newspaper 
came, it was a medium of news, not opinion. The 
first daily newspaper in England, the Daily Courant, 
1702, was also strictly a news sheet. | 

Neither were the early editors actuated by the same 
purposes that inspired the pamphleteers. They were 
neither the reflectors nor the leaders of thought among 
their people. 

The pamphlet is not to be closely associated with 
the newspaper, lacking as it did the distinguishing 
characteristics, periodicity, continuity of name, and 
the presence of news. 

But the failure to claim primacy for the editorial 
does not argue any less regard for its present impor- 
tance. It is the flower of journalism, not the root. 
News is the root and stem. Interpretation of that 
news is the flower and seed, giving significance and 
worth to the whole plant. 

Editors in England.—The time came in England, 
as later in America, when men who might otherwise 
have been pamphleteers became newspaper editors 

2 


Citizens and Friends, Come 
Let Us Reason Together. 


ACH new day’s events in Europe ought to make us 
all think more serjously of the IMPERATIVE 
NECESSITY of supporting the President. next 


KEEPING DOWN TRAFFIC CONGESTION. 


When the influenza nigeeatrs assumed sararte Bro- 
ommission land j 


THE EX-PRESIDENTS' MAN- 
IFESTO. 

One doesn’t have to be 2 Dem- 

ccrat to pepreciate ee statesman- 


Education of Women in India 


Nearty sixty-five years ago, the government of 
India, in forming a new Department ef Public Instruc- 
tion, declared that the education of women should se 
given “frank and cordial support,” a : 


THE HETCH-HETCHY AMENDMENTS 


hey Are From 38 to 42, Inclusive, and They Should 
Be Voted Down 
HARTER Amendments 38 to 42, inclusive, are intended to facilitate 
me 7 use of money voted for a water Peet for the construction 
trade b: : pstrusti ’ 


THE CRISIS BEFORE US Us 
AND THE DUTY OF THE HOUR 


No Time for Trimmers in Politics to 
Gefog the Issue — Bold and Coura- 
geous Action the Country's Need 


By WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT 
Copyriokt. 1319. by Public Ledoer Co. 
AROR unlons have been seceaary Tr se 
eure te the indlyidual working msn ao 
opportunity to deal_wit y 


THEY ARE NOT HOME YET 


Pictures of the big Liberty parade in 
New York City show that President Wilson 
cap keep step. This fs as it should be It 
j jis essentia) that be keep step with Repubtic- 
@ns as well as Democrats, The entire na- 
ition {s trying to keep step and the Prest- 
dent must march in unison ie men ep all 
political 9 D 


I¢ peace should come tomorrow it does not mean 
that our saldiers will forthwith stack arms and 


come home. It will be a year at least and pos- 
sibly longer before the last of our returning trans 


Italy's Day 
ie will gain something more than 

her unredeemed lands by the collapse of 
Austria. Gee_pill be relieved from a men- 
Bee lasgp cen Oe Sireasened rai over sins 


FRENCH AND ANERICANS. 


In Boston this winter the Lowell In- 
stitute is to devote its principal course 
” e ae, D jterature, and the 


Equal Rights For All. 

Those highly logical creatures, the 
militant suffragettes at Washington, 
all of them charming ladies and aii 


A CHANCE YOR THE RUBBERNECKS. 
Switzerland, the oldest of the repub- 


“STAND BY WILSON.” 
The best and only way for the Re- 


publicans (o “stand by Wilsom” and 
- win the war ig = pada 5 ee 


Victory presages immediate peace 
While the Huns ére ‘soe aig 


BROOMSTICK PREPAREDNESS. f Lost: A gadea Million 
By Turoposz Roosevety. ; Be stumbled upon artificial xitk 


ux other day St. Patrick’s Cathe 
dral, New York City, witnessed a 

strange and welcome sight and heard a 
strange and welcome sound—congreg 


At present we Americans have two while searching for the incandes- 
beams Suton, cent light and threw it aside with 
ed ee ee = emer on a thousand other scrappetl experi- 


i : EMEMBER: The most vital thing in our lives is three meats a day. 
HE Merchant Marine act is the xt — Those three meals are threatened. To remove this threat we 
achievement of the late Congressional session.) |. proposed: First, that the land be taken out of the hands of thc 
It opens up 2 vista of problems and possibilities for} jan hog and the speculator and put perv in the hands of the farmer. 
the future which i it is not too early to be considering. Second, that we be permitted to receiye our food from 


DIVERSE STYLES OF EpIToRIAL HEADINGS AND TYPOGRAPHY, 
WITH VARYING WIDTHS OF COLUMNS. 


THE EDITORIAL 


and introduced the element of opinion, even fostered 
it at times to the exclusion of everything else. 

Such editors in England in the middle of the sev- 
enteenth century were Marchamont Needham, cham- 
pion of one side and then the other, John Berkenhead, 
an “administration editor” who has the distinction of 
being the first newspaper man to be elected to parlia- 
ment, and Roger L’Estrange, a champion of press 
censorship—for his opponents. In the eighteenth cen- 
tury Daniel Defoe and Jonathan Swift developed the 
political power of the press; Henry Fielding and To- 
bias Smollett interpreted the policies of powerful min- 
isters; William Cobbett made his newspapers the or- 
gans of the masses of the common people; Leigh 
Hunt used his paper to promote culture, though also 
adding his name to the list of distinguished “jail edi- 
tors” as a result of a lively characterization of George 
IV; John Wilkes, the Woodfalls, and a score of 
others made beginnihgs in journalistic endeavor which 
were to develop later. 

In the nineteenth century, the Walters built up the 
London Times and J. T. Delane, its greatest editor, 
made it “thunder”; Lord Glenesk developed the Morn- 
ing Post; Charles Dickens demonstrated with his Lon- 
don News how a great reporter may turn out a poor 
editor; C. P. Scott made of the Manchester Guardian 
a great organ of opinion; Lord Northcliffe began to 
attain with his Daily Mail new levels of circulation 
and influence. In the nineteenth century, in England, 
the influence of the press on opinion and on govern- 
mental policies probably was greater than at any other 


4 


THURSDAY, MARCH 1 1st 


Qpectal Articte: 
Books of the ‘Week 

Gorvespendence : 
Congested Docks (Mrs. Hubert Walter) 
Feion (Captain Loseby, M.P., Mr, EB 
Mareh, end Mr. F.G. Howard) .. 


Colonel Meore-Brebazon, MP.) .. 
Petition of Right (Mr. H. Buckmaster) 
Hindrances te Housing (Mr. G. Allon) 
Ferm Werkers’ Weges (Mr. GQ 

MeDiquham),, .. ss 
Income Tax Coromissioners 
Tho Coad Crisis (tr. F. H. Howider) 
Jacobite Clases (Mr. H. J. Powell) 
Excessive Taxation 
Taxation of Capital 2. ee 
Four per Cent. Tax Compounded 

Lom .. 
Shipe for Australian Wheat 2. 0m 
Plant Growth (Professor A.D. Waller) 


o 


War 


Partemest . 
Political Noma, ee 
Court Circular ead News -.. 
‘The New Territorial Army 
‘The » Londoo Gazette ” 
Naval Appointments .. 


= = - 


ae i 


Fee eon 


Casualties to Officers - = 
News lo Briel — = - o - | 
Law Report = - = = a 
Qew Notices . -“— ee es ee 6 
Sporting Latelligeaco— 
Racagc =e = © ‘se = ? 
Rowing -“— = o - wit 
Rackets - ~- - - ~~ 7 
Got .. - - - - - 7 
Binnie see wll fees wa’ \7) 
BUlards - = = = - 7 
Eetste Market. 2s we oe + 20 
Auctions Gummery . oo o . 2 
and Commerc® = 36-25 
end Shipping inteliigeoce ., « 25 
FEATURES IN “THE TIMES” 
TO-DAY. 
De. Kapp 


Weather Forecast. 


Esmianp, S.E.—Fresh or atroog 


(ervala ; visibility mainly indifierent ;roild. (p.20) 
————————————————— 
Amportant changes in greduation and edmini- 
stratioa are recommraded by the Royal 
Commission cn the Incametax (p. 11) 
Though Dr. Kapp bas resigned, confusion etiD 
ovigne ia Germany. The Communists are 
Attive everywhere, and there is tok of o 
Corgapat Govervamm @ Berlip.. Fighting 


ee 

ip 16) 

One policemas was kilfed, ancl anether comstahis 
eed a bystander wounded. by shots fired at 
them when leaving ths chusob at Teomievara, 
Co. Tipperary. (p. 16) 

Albert Edward Redfern, formerly « leutenant 
in the Devonshire Regiment, has been 
sentenced te death for the murder of Edgar 
T. Oates, manager of @ Loeds bank. (p. 13) 

Sir A. and Lady Geddes were entertained by the 
English-Speaking Union af a farewell dinner. 
(p. 18) 

Business in the discount market was very quiet 
Pending to-day’s Bank rate decision. Fears 
of an edvance in the rate kept stock markets 
idle and dull Bilver again fell sharply and 
gold declined further. The French and 


Fred 


P 
5 
58 


Italian exobanges reached ® new high level |,st every turn by this bind of “ economic con- 


(p. 21) 


Summary of Law Cases will be found an page «| “ 


——_—— 
The Monerchist “ Putsch.” 

The German “ militarist” and monarchist 
plot has ended in ignominious failare The 
Kapp-Lattwite Government is no mora, and us 
chiels have themssives announced their resigna- 
tien with such pital explanations as they 
could devises, The latest report is, indeed, 
to the effect that they have fied from 
Berlin. Da Karr, it i» thought, “may 
“bave lost his nerve.” Persons who lose their 
nerve ought not to pose as the heade—or the 
figurebeads—of revolutions. The business needs 
“daring, and daring, and still more daring,” 
as Danton told the Jacobina, The commumqud 
issved from Berlin natarally makes no menton 
of the late “ Inrmaist CHANCELLOR’s” nerves. 
| 1¢ assigns as the reason for Da Kurr’s endden 
disappearance from his exalted post an alleged 
decision of the Bauer Government. That Govern- 
ment, it asserts, has decided to fulfil the most 
essential of the political demands which Da 
Karr and the other insurgents made upon it 
The demand is not specified, bat apparently # 
was the militarist summons to hold immediate 
elections. Ita rejection, the covmmaniqué asserts, 
“led to the establishment of the Kapp Govern- 


al 


public erder to its foundations, am 

as events show, straight into the hands of 
Bolshevists, should affect to” be the 
selfish champion of nations) 

the implacable enemy of the qnti-Socia] m: 
ment, to which, with reckless levity, 
aflorded new opportunitics for evil. 

the Spartacists and their allies may sueceed in 
using the chance which the party of the altar 
and the throne bave thrown im their way, re 
mains to be seen. At Chemnitz and other places 


gEekee 


i. 


Poe (evoinen, (ie, hicks neglect to deal more 
with the militery conspiracy which has 
openly conducted under their eyes for so many 
mootha Their errors have bean great, and they 
are pow paying the beavy penalty, but what 
ever these evrors have beep im the pest, they 
apprer to have treated thie maolent challenge to 
thetr suthority with landabie firmness and dec 
j Sou, frem the moment when they were mlety 


scription,” as Hera Mena aptly terms it. The 


they are allowed to reach the Statute-book The 


mended wil) make important and pleasact 
reading to the taxpayer—partirularty the 
over-burdenrd middle-class taxpayer—they will 
tend to divert attention from other reccummenda- 


warned our reacks in oor City Notes last Mon 


policy set 


loreg 
work scopy 
been Fi 


ee ers 
frit 
atk 


§ 


& 


FER 
at 


F 


abips. But ay, 


established tm Sguth Gaweuy. The staismert|day drat the Keer of Iwigpd Saree bey | domonsirated” 


PorTION OF THE EpiTorIAL PAGE OF THE ENGLISH “THUNDERER.” 


THE EDITORIAL 


time in any country. Statesmen took hints from it and 
politicians sought its approval. 

The American Editor.—In the United States, the 
first newspapers, led by the Boston News Letter, es- 
tablished in 1704, opened the history of American 
journalism, as it had been opened three-quarters of a 
century earlier in England, with news as the sole or 
predominant object, though the ethical purpose, to 
“cure” lying by making known the truth, was an- 
nounced in Publick Occurrences, a precursof of the © 
first newspaper. 

Contemporaneously in England, the current of edi- 
torial opinion was broad and deep. And before many 
decades the pre-Revolutionary crises and, later, the 
post-Revolutionary issues in politics and government, 
gave rise to great editorial activity in this country. 
Men became editors in order to hold more advan- 
tageous positions as publicists. The importance of 
the newspaper as a vehicle of opinion was recognized 
in the use made of it by statesmen, both through con- 
tributed opinions and through acquired “organs.” Ben- 
jamin Franklin added the luster of his name to Amer- 
ican journalism. 

In the periods which saw the full flowering of the 
party press and the beginnings of the cheap press, 
editorial opinion gained a generally recognized impor- 
tance and an almost universal prevalence in publica- 
tions. Early in the century William Coleman founded 
the New York Evening Post with high and explicit 
editorial purposes, which were to be admirably up- 
held by succeeding editors, William Cullen Bryant, 


DEVELOPMENT 


John Bigelow, Carl Schurz, E. L. Godkin, Horace 
White, and others. William Lloyd Garrison brought 
out the Liberator. Benjamin Day started the New 
York Sun, and James Gordon Bennett, the Herald, 
with preéminence in news-handling as their chief am- 
bition. Greeley laid the foundations of his future su- 
premacy in the field of newspaper opinion. Samuel 
Bowles 2d persuaded his father to make a daily out 
of the Springfield Republican, in order, as it seemed, 
that it might enter early upon the great career which 
Bowles had in store for it and which it continues to- 
day, as an interpreter of the meaning of events. 

Golden Age of the Editorial—The decade pre- 
ceding the Civil War is sometimes spoken of by 
newspaper men as the Golden Age of the editorial; 
but it is difficult to separate it sharply from the war 
period itself or the succeeding years of reconstruction. 
During this third of a century there were many 
greater and lesser giants roaming the fields of opinion, 
with Greeley towering above them all: Charles A. 
Dana, with the New York Sun; Henry J. Raymond, 
with the Times; Joseph Medill, through the Chicago 
Tribune; Henry Watterson, through the Louisville 
Courier-Journal; Bowles; and others. 

This was the era of personal journalism, before the 
newspaper as a news-gathering and commercial insti- 
tution swallowed up the editor as an individual. 


The “great editor” of this time was, to quote Tiffany 
Blake, editor of the Chicago Tribune, “a man whose main 
business was public affairs. He was, essentially and pre- 


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3 He uve ee ile pu Hot 

AT a at i 

i ao Se eT 

1 ay af: i 2 iy 

zl: (ii aq Le ee 

: fliitte ik ARE tie [iat iat val 
1d Hoe HD judith Hf ital bar ibe 

Hah Gale Ee elia lit Bae 


GrEELEY’s FAmMous SIGNED EpIToRIAL TO WHICH LINCOLN REPLIED. 


DEVELOPMENT 


eminently, a public man. The people listened to their par- 
sons one day in seven; to their politicians even less often. 
But the editor preached to them daily, and his function 
was\as well recognized as that of the preacher or politi- 
cian, of which he was a most formidable combination. 

“The voice of this striking social figure was the edi- 
torial, and in his hands it enjoyed a kind of conspicuity 
and prestige it is likely never again to attain. This was 
not solely because of the special genius of the great editor 
as writer or thinker, but also, and perhaps chiefly, because 
of the nature of his office and its place in the social and 
political life of the period. But there is also to be taken 
into account the fact that under the simple conditions of 
the old-time newspaper its editor was able to write almost 
always in the line of his own personal convictions, with 
all the tonic sense of his own direct accountability, and 
with full freedom to wreak his personality upon his 
literary form in all its whims, its inconsistencies, even 
its extravagances. ‘This gave his work its gusto, its 
reality, its human appeal.” 


Modern Developments.—In the years intervening 
between those days and the present, which it 1s 
natural to characterize as the modern period, at least 
three interesting developments are to be noted. 

1. The veiled successor to the personal editor, the 
editorial writer, has taken over the function of com- 
mentator, and has been multiplied into the editorial 
staff, with its tendencies towards specialization pre- 
paring the way for authoritative opinions. The voice 
of the great paper has become the voice of an insti- 
tution. The editor, as some one has put it, has be- 
come an unrecognized statesman. The change is, at 


9 


THE EDITORIAL 


least, inevitable, and there is better reason for it— 
as will appear later—than is given in the rather cyni- 
cal remark of G. Binney Dibblee, an English commen- 
tator on newspapers, that “reverence attaches itself 
more easily to the unknown, and the shadow of cor- 
porate responsibility adds somewhat to the freedom 
of writing and very much to the fertility of inven- 
tion,” and further that, “the grand manner can be 
more easily sustained where irrelevant individual 
characteristics are suppressed, and continuity can be 
better preserved in spite of necessary changes in the 
staff.” Henry Watterson has thus stated his view 
on the subject: 


We are passing through a period of transition. The 
old system of personal journalism having gone out, and 
the new system of counting-room journalism having not 
quite reached a full realization of itself, the editorial 
function seems to have fallen into a lean and slippered 
state, the matters of tone and style honored rather in 
the breach than in the observance. Too many ill-trained, 
uneducated lads have graduated out of the city editor’s 
room by sheer force of audacity and enterprise into the 
more important posts. Too often the counting-room takes 
no supervision of the editorial room beyond the immediate 
selling value of the paper the latter turns out. Things 
upstairs are left at loose ends. They are examples of 
opportunities lost through absentee landlordism. These 
conditions, however, are ephemeral. There will never be 
a Greeley, or a Raymond, or a Dana, playing the role 
of “star” and personally exploited by everything appear- 
ing in journals which seemed to exist mainly to glorify 
them. Each was in his way a man of superior attain- 

IO 


DEVELOPMENT 


ments. Each thought himself an unselfish servant of the 
public. Yet each had his limitations—his ambitions and 
prejudices, his likes and dislikes, intensified and amplified 
by the habit of personalism, often unconscious. And, this 
personal element eliminated, why may not the impersonal 
head of the coming newspaper—proud of his profession, 
and satisfied with the results of its ministration—render 
a yet better account to God and the people in unselfish 
devotion to the common interest? 


2. Yellow Journalism, a spectacular phenomenon 
produced by W. R. Hearst, with his New York Jour- 
nal and other papers, and Joseph Pulitzer, with his 
New York World, has had its rise and decline; but it 
has brought permanently into journalism the typogra- 
phically sensational, easy-to-read, universally appeal- 
ing editorial type of which Arthur Brisbane, chief edi- 
tor for Mr.-Hearst, is the creator. In spite of its 
shortcomings and its excesses and its misdeeds, sen- 
sational journalism has made a valuable contribution 
to appreciation of the editor’s function as a moralist, 
a philosopher, an entertainer, an educator. 

3. An understanding of the vastly increased im- 
portance of news, socially, politically, economically, 
ethically, and of the ease with which public opinion 
can be formed through the news columns, led to the 
temporary transfer of editorializing to the news col- 
umns, both in the frank mixing of opinion and news 
and in the more subtle “handling” of news for edi- 
torial effect. By some, this practice is still held to be 
justified by its results. Its propriety is still a subject 
for fiery debate. Its employment is common. But the 

II 


THE EDITORIAL 


weight of opinion has turned against it. Its advan- 
tages are bought at too high a price of loss in public 
confidence. It too plainly deprives the public of its 
right to an unadulterated product, the unbiased news. 

At best, no newspaper, in gathering and evaluating 
news, can be absolutely fair; but it can avoid inten- 
tional partiality. 

Opinion an Essential Element.—The editorial 
page will not atrophy. It is a vital organ of the jour- 
nalistic body. The paramount question for study by — 
newspaper men is how it may best meet the new con- 
ditions; how it may most successfully perform the 
functions that inevitably belong to it. The mission of 
journalism is indeed “to satisfy the inquiring mind,’ 
but the mind of the public inquires not only about cur- 
rent facts, but about values as well. 

Signed Editorials—Minor experiments in edi- 
torial practice have been tried, from time to time, in 
the way of employing extra-staff writers or authori- 
ties to handle special subjects, also in printing signed 
editorials by staff writers, and contributed editorials 
by such leaders as Theodore Roosevelt and William 
Howard Taft. It does not yet appear that any method 
superior to the conventional one inherited from the 
past has been developed. As to the propriety of hav- 
ing editorials signed, following the practice of news- 
papers on the continent of Europe, it has been aptly 
pointed out that subjects for editorial treatment in | 
any large American newspaper are threshed out at the 
editorial council and the man who writes the editorial 
frequently accepts ideas from every member of the 

12 


DEVELOPMENT 


staff. He would be guilty of plagiarism if he should 
attach his name to the editorial. 

Exception may be made, of course, in the case of 
such special editorial features as the weekly “lay ser- 


mon,” in the Kansas City Journal, written always by 
the same member of the staff and signed by him. 


CHAPTER II 


WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH OF THE EDITORIAL 


Not infrequently the question is raised among 
newspapermen and others interested in the newspa- 
per, “Is the editorial anything more than a newspaper 
habit ?” 

The feeling of uncertainty as to the quantity and 
quality or even the existence of that newspaper pro- 
duct or by-product called editorial influence extends 
even among editors themselves—perhaps especially 
among editors. 

It is common to hear remarks about the “decline” 
of the editorial page, though not so common as before 
the revival of interest in discussions of opinions oc- 
casioned by the tremendous issues growing out of the 
world war. 

Even in English journalism, according to J. D. Sy- 
mon in “The Press and Its Story,” more and more 
the average man echoes the cry of a hard-headed 
Scotchman, ‘Give us your news, not your opinions; 
we can form our opinions for ourselves, if you will 
tell us accurately what is happening.’” And again, 
“T find now-a-days that those who read leading articles 
are either the very old or the very young.” G. 
Binney Dibblee diagnoses as follows: | 


14 


WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH 


Just as we chose the American daily paper forthe model 
of a news-gathering and news-presenting organization, 
so here we must admit that, as an organ for expressing 
instructive opinion not only on politics but on general 
topics, the distinctively English type of paper is a far 
more potent and more highly developed instrument. In 
this respect the American press suffers severely from the 
general democratic contempt prevailing on that continent 
for expert opinion of all kinds. Since one man there is 
commonly reputed to be as good as another, so there is no 
room even in that huge population for any one whose 
opinion carries weight in any other sense than that a large 
number of people think that he adequately expresses their 
views or comes near to saying publicly, what privately 
each man feels and thinks more effectively for himself. 


Signs of Lost Confidence.—In this country, as 
well as in England, one of the patent indications of 
doubt—it seems sometimes it must be desperation— 
as to the efficacy of editorials is the widespread effort 
to transform the editorial page into a sort of layer 
cake with plenty of frosting. The constantly grow- 
ing variety of features that appear on the editorial 
page manifests at least a determination to save the 
right-hand side of the page from the complete neg- 
lect which threatens the first, second, and third col- 
umns—as far over as matters of intellectual interest 
are allowed to encroach. 

Another confession of the impotency of the edi- 
torial column is involved in the practice of editorial- 
izing the news. Not alone by the injection of edi- 
torial views into news stories and their headings, but 


15 


THE EDITORIAL 


also by the clever “coloring” of news stories, is the 
fact betrayed that the directing heads of many news- 
papers have discovered what they regard as the best 
-way to “get results.” 

This applies more particularly to the metropolitan 
press. The small newspaper has been perhaps less 
self-critical than its larger contemporary and in its 
small field has had less reason to worry about lack of 
editorial influence, taking comfort in the fact that even 
the readers themselves do not know how much or 
how little they are influenced by their newspapers. 

The Chief Criticisms.—Thus it appears that from 
the newspaper world itself come admissions of edi- 
torial weakness or futility. But that is not the full 
extent of the trouble. From the benches of the pub- 
lic, right, left, and center, come indictments not only 
of the utility but also of the ethics of the editorial 
column. Some of the most common are: 

1. That editorial opinion can be bought. Or that, 
if not directly purchasable for money, it is dictated 
indirectly through the business office of the newspa- 
per. That, while only in particular cases is a press 
venal, as a whole and always it is capitalistic. That 
“the daily play of the higher mind upon the lower 
mind,” the “intense emotion of conviction,” can not 
come from a business concern. 

2. That editorial columns are usually colored by 
bigotry and based on an implied assertion of iner- 
rancy, while the truth is that few editors have first 
rate ability and high educational qualifications neces- 
sary for passing judgment on great questions of the 

| 16 


WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH 


day. As Bernard Shaw puts it, no newspaper would 
leave the destiny of its country or even its city in the 
hands of its editorial writers who are telling the pa- 
per’s readers what ought to be done. | 

3. That editorial writers assume to relieve the 
reader of the need of thinking for himself; try to 
force opinions upon him, in spite of suspicion and an- 
tagonism thus aroused; overdo the practice of “ap- 
plied mentality.” 

4. That editors sabi indefensible attacks upon 
public men and others. 

5. That editorials are dull and profitless—ground 
out by men who have insufficient time to make their 
writing effective—and have no merit except that they 
afford the reader complete mental rest. Thus did 
Carlyle rail at the leading articles as “straw that has 
been threshed a hundred times without wheat.” 

6. That editors are prone to follow a “safety first” 

r “absent treatment” policy of denouncing bank rob- 
bery and the crimes of the satraps of Persia or advo- 
cating passionately reforms in Togoland, thus pro- 
ducing “filler” made up of equal parts of verbal gym- 
nastics and cowardice. ‘“‘Editorialene,”’ one critic has 
called it. 

7. That—at the other extreme from the preceding 
—editorials usually deal with local trivialities, discus- 
sing the bad conditions of sidewalk crossings or the 
objections to keeping hogs within the city limits. 

8. That it has not been uncommon in the past for 
newspapers to use syndicated editorials put out by 
so called “editorial copy foundries,” at fifty cents or 


17 


THE EDITORIAL 


less a column—unless exclusive copy on one side or 
another of some question was desired, in which case 
the price ranged from five dollars to ten dollars for 
each thousand words—a practice so full of insincerity 
and deceit as to be worthy of characterization as rank 
imposture, Similar methods of syndication are not 
uncommon to-day. 

g. That editorial writers say things that they do 
not believe. 

10. That from the editor’s point of view, things 
are always all good or utterly bad. There is no such 
thing as fairness in keeping accounts with men and 
measures by entry of both debit and credit items. 

11. That, once committed to a policy, perhaps on 
the most flimsy evidence, no editor ever changes front, 
however untenable his position becomes. 

12. That editorial columns are seldom used to 
acknowledge a mistake or to right a wrong. 

13. That editors conduct their campaigns on an 
emotional, not a rational basis, substituting for an in- 
tellectual assault on an evil principle the pursuit of 
the individual bad man, and sometimes abandoning the 
chase as soon as the excitement begins to subside. 

The first four of these indictments are usually di- 
rected at the metropolitan press, the fifth, sixth, sev- 
enth and eighth, at the rural editor, and the remainder 
at both about equally. 

Need of Studying Problems.—It is impossible to 
deny that there is some truth in all of these indict- 
ments, though for the most part such criticisms are 
highly exaggerated. It is not the purpose of this book 

| 18 


ry 


WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH -: 


to minimize the faults of journalism, nor to take up 
criticisms, in order, and dispose of them as effectively 
as possible. It is the purpose, rather, to discuss ways 
and means of improving conditions, whether very bad 
or merely somewhat less than perfect. The worse 
they are, the greater the need for efforts at improve- 
ment. 

The chapters which follow, dealing with methods of 
finding, gathering and handling editorial materials, on 
the one hand, and, on the other, with notions as to edi- 
torial responsibilities and opportunities, are, broadly 
speaking, answers to the charges made. In some cases 
the answer amounts to a denial, in others to an admis- 
sion of guilt; but in both, the main concern is with 
methods of improvement. To take up the charges 
here would result in needless duplication of discussion 
that comes up in its proper place along through the 
logical development of the subject of editorial writing. 

Conditions Better To-day.—Perhaps it may be 
said in passing, however, that while it is true that 
“there were giants in those days,” the modern editor 
does not suffer by comparison on an ethical basis with 
the editor of the past. In fact he is in most respects 
superior. He is not more mercenary nor more dis- 
honest; he is less egotistical, less intolerant, less abus- 
ive, less contemptuous of the reader’s ability to think, 
equally courageous, better trained, and more widely 
informed. Of course, such a comparison is far from 
scientific; it is a matter of impressions formed by 


reading and experience; but it is fairly well agreed to 


by those who have taken pains to strike a balance. 
19 


THE EDITORIAL 


The trouble with the editorial page is, in a word, 
that it has not developed in a way to meet new con- 
ditions. These new conditions are not mainly in the 
realm of ethics. They grow out of (1) The greater 
education of the people; (2) less willingness to follow 
leaders in the party, in the church or on the platform; 
(3) the higher pressure of modern life; (4) changes 
in public taste; (5) new competing interests; (6) 
changes in the newspaper as an institution; (7) 
changes in the newspaper itself—its size, its variety 
of content, its appeal, its discovery of publicity in the 
news as an effective weapon. 

False Attitude of Editors—When an ineffective 
editorial page is examined for an explanation of its 
failure, the trouble is generally found to be, not in the 
ethics of the page but in what may be called its tech- 
nique—the methods it uses to meet conditions and do 
its work. There are not so many dishonest editors 
as there are incompetent editors—writers who take 
themselves too seriously; who have nothing to learn 
about editorial writing. When such an editor is asked 
for a recipe for success in his line of work, he usually 
makes one of the following replies: 

1. “The good editor is born, not made.” A state- 
ment that becomes less fallacious if “not” is changed 
toiand” 

2. “All that an editor needs is something to say.” 
Which may be brought much nearer the truth by 
changing “all” to “one important thing.” Dr. Johnson 
did indeed testify that the secret of his power lay in 
the fact that he always tried to have something to 

ZO 


WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH 


say. But his explanation did not stop there. The rest 
of his formula is just as important: “I say it as well 
as I can.” 

3. “I just sit down to the typewriter and write. 
That is all there is to being an editor.” Also that is 
what is the matter with a woeful number of editorial 
columns. 

4. “Anybody can write editorials.” Anybody does 
—more’s the pity. 

5. “There is no use writing editorials for anybody 
except the few who think.” That is doubtless the 
privilege of an editor if he can afford it; but the thrill 
that the editor gets from organizing a select aris- 
tocracy of intellect among his readers, and electing 
himself a member of it, is more expensive and less 
creditable than the more “human” kinds of thrills that 
can be bought cheaply at any amusement park or 
moving picture theater. 

6. “You might as well ask by what system Caruso 
draws a crowd.” Very well, why not ask it? Does 
anybody doubt that Caruso has a system? Caruso is 
endowed with a great voice, to be sure;. but is that all 
the explanation of Caruso? 

The Roct of the Trouble—The whole trouble 
with the editorial page—or at least nine-tenths of it 
—may be summed up in two brief statements: First, 
editorials with neither knowledge, insight, nor cour- 
age in them, nor an attractive sense of humor, are 
nothing more than “fillers”; second, the editor who 
has not thought out and applied a technique of his 
craft is “going it blind.” If he exerts any influence, 

21 


THE EDITORIAL 


it is by accident or intuition. It is a mere foolish 
dream for him to expect to exercise leadership while 
affecting to despise the knowledge of tactics and stra- 
tegy upon which leadership depends. 

Editors who are lacking in these two particulars 
really have no warrant for publishing their opinions 
or undertaking policies. 

The fact that some writers may do a thing passably 
well by instinct does not argue against the necessity 
of training for other writers. Even the greatest edi- 
tors might have been more powerful for a study of 
the technique of their craft. 

Why the Editorial Will Persist—To the ques- 
tion asked at the beginning, “Is the editorial anything 
more than a newspaper habit?” the answer may be 
summed up by stating a few of the reasons why news- 
papers print editorials—continue to print them even 
though, in some instances, the publisher’s confidence 
in their efficacy is little more than the “benefit of a 
doubt.” 

1. They have come to be an essential part of the 
conception of a newspaper. They supply a thought 
element necessary to its completeness. They are the 
“Interpreter’s House.” They furnish an incentive and 
an outlet for the best intellectual ability of the editor 
and his staff. ‘One good comment is worth ten in- 
formations,’ said de Blowitz. 

2. Whether or not they are read as much as might 
be desired, they enhance, by their very presence, the 
prestige of the paper. Taken as a whole they dignify 
journalism. 

22 


DAILY REPUBLICAN COUNTY COMMIESIO RS. 


ge -SPRINGFIFLD, MARCH 22 
WHIG NOMINATIONS, 


FOR PRESIDENT, 


HENRY CLAY. 
von vies VacnoRet, 


JGHN DAVIS. 
Basan ee the derision of Oe Whig Conreation te 
beldea tn Ualtimore, in May, 1H, 

Ree County Commussionsre: 
PATRICK BOISE, of Westfield, 
FORRES KYLE, of Chester, 

CYRUS KNOX, of Yalmor. 

For Special Commissioners: 

UZAT, KOCK WELL of Southwick, 

SBENEZFEM RUSSELL, of Springfield 
For Cuvnty Trensurer. 
WILLIAM RICE. 


Wo trave ery ived to try the experiment of 

@ daily pxper ie Springfield. Two years 
aisce, wx propused the matier to the public, 
consulted somé.of our friends who were 
jiness men, and they dissuaded us from it 

9 an Wnproflable undertaking. We com 
encner now, eithout a single subscriber or ed- 
ising custumer premised. After contin 
wing the publication eix months, ure year, if 
find in bt tow much of a loss, we shall stop. 
Sn we hope the public will sustain the en- 
terptise, and enslln us the second year, to 
issue s larrer sheet We find that towns 
much emaller than ours; and of much less 
Dasinesa, have aupported one or more daily 
popers several years, [ourlittle daily could 
have one balf of what is paid ia Springficld, 
for New York and Boston papera, it would 
ensure its support. It is for our citizens, 
therefore, to say by their patronage. whether 

they alll have a loce! daily paper or not 

We have bean told by some of our business 
mea, that thero are now too many newspapers 
dntown, Thatmaybe One thing wo know, 
thefive weelily papers now published in thie 
part of the town have too small a circulation 
in proportion to the populatiu:s through whieb 
they circulate, and Wo email to warrant that 
wntlay for editonal and mechanical labor 
which they oughtto have. Tho two Whiz 
papers im this town, and the onv in Westfield, 
we presume, Love nol Aalf os many subscri- 
bere im the tyety the usyal somber of 


votere, This remark, we think, will 

hold true with moré foree, an regard w the 
three Loco Fucp papers in the county Lf 
this state of things #3 to be permanent, and 
people will not support therr county und lowe 
papers batier, it would be more advantageous 
and profitable to advertisers, and more eco 
namical to the publishers, if the five week- 
Hesin the top wery merzed into two or 
dyea 

But whatevermay be the number of nech- 
hea, we believe the business and population 
of the town call for a daily paprs To ad- 
wertisers. large ens espectully, a daily paper 
formishes & cheayor and more prompt facility 
Gran canbe had in the weekly popers. Mon 
of burinces, we think, will Aud «1 for their ip- 
terest and convewence, to susiain 8 bows’ 
daily paper 

We need hardly say that the politics of ibe 
Daily Republican will he Warc—Faxeuie 
Mase Wisc The Prorulenvial election will 
svon open, and wil) be one of unusual interpat 
and excitement in this campaign we 
tend the Daily Republican shall be a vigr 
Jant asd actre av viliury to the Whig cause 

To the end that we inay succeed in our 
onderiaking, we shall endcavor, by all tbe 
oaans weur powers, io make an Joteresiing 
chert ht will not be particularly devoted to 
pelitics, but we mean to make it also a aswr 
paper, and especially a focal ono—ss well 2s 
amedivm for the diecussion of matters of 
focal interest. We invite our Snends to as 
east os by communications on such subjects 
as they may deem imponaat or interesting 
Glcoune we shrall reserve the right of yodg~ 
fag whatas proper for insertion, and shall 
© consider ourselves responsible for all 
@pinions advanced by correspondents, but 
hall endeavur io zive every communication 
Za Dan amentees sed Ae, 


Are citizens aware of the importance of re- 
electing tho present Board of County Com- 
tmixsionere on Monday next? Are they 
aware that-great efforts ate making to die 
pluve them? Ut cannot be denied that the 
County never had more ablo and judicious 
Hoard ; and as they have commenced anim- 

t reformation in our penitentiary eye 
tem, they ought to be sustained (if for no oth+ 
er reason) pnother term, to enable them to 
complete the good work they have beyun, in 
estublishing a House of Correction. Letevery 
sqoud citizen—every friend of good morals and 
good order—remamber to give thein his vule 
on Monday next. 


———$—_$__—_—_ 

(James Harper Esq. of the eminent 
publishing firm of Harper & Brothers, has 
‘eeu nominated by the Nutive Amencan par- 
ty of New York city, as their candidate for 
Mayor. 


Covator Common Preas—Chiwl Justice 
Willisms, the Salem Gazette saythehas re~ 
signed his placeon the Bench. We ave sor 
ry to fee this course in the Judges of thie 
Coun, and although justice has not been 
dome to them by the Legislature, we hardly 
think they are justified in 2 wholesale resij- 
Nation, 08 it sppears probable is to occur, 

Mr. Clifford, the Disirict Attorney for the 
New Bedford district, has resigned that of- 
fico; on account of the small salary. 


Br. Frederick Dwight of thietown, arrived 
ot Honoluks, eno of tho Sandwich Islands, 
Dee. 19, from the Columbia River. 


ers interested, will not forget the eal) of a 
meeting to be beld at the Town Hall in 
Spiingfiell, on the 9th of April, at 11 AM. 
todorm a County Agricultural Sooety, under 
a late act of incorporation—and @ Horticol- 
tural Society. 


=) 
(Two prisoners escaped from the 
Coknty Jail in this town, on Sunday sae 
-They were Indians, ‘old birds,’ and had . 
imprisoned for some petty tarceny. 


Who's going to bo Postmaster? Eeho 


answers who* 


A large public meeting was held at North-, 
ampton last weck, and etrong Resolutions 
and a letition, were adopted, againalthg sa~ 
Bexation of Texas 


Mr Ezekiel Adams, late of the Chicopee 
Falls Hotel, has taken ehanze of Ihe Athene> 
um Flotetin Hanford, Mr Adams's numer 
ous frende sn this vicinity, When they gp to 
Hartford, will of course give-him-a eal. 


Mores E Eager who ilisnppeared from this 
town, (Cabotwille) about three weeks ance 
on account of the exposure of some of bis 
forscries, voluntarily returned to that village 
Jaa weck, and waz arrested, On Monday 
fathe was examined before Justice Hooker, 
for forzing the names of M. Kingman & Son, 
and Silas Moamsn (of Cabotville) as joint 
endorsers with himself, of a note of $350, 
given by Joseph Ashley & Co.and payable 
atthe Spnuzfield Bunk. Eager plead guilty 
aod was bound over in the sum of 8700 for 
his appearance for trial at the June term of 
the Count of Common Pleas. Much other 
forged paper of Kager’s is said to be in ex: 
istence un this town and wieanity. 


Tue Teass Quesrion—Letters ~ have 
been roveivedun this city from'members of 
Congress, slatiog that al! this agitation about 
Tenas and Oregow is perfectly needless, and 
that here is not the beast season for appre- 
hepsion concerning the annexation of the one 
pr the forcible occupation of the other, These 
letters are from Locofoco members, and they 
speak very decidedly —N, ¥ Express. 

Gem, Jscusow im ravi Awnena- 
Tiow '—A letter (just published o Globe,) 
written hy Gen Jachson to 2 member of Con- 
gins, within 2 year, favors the annesalion of 
‘Texas to the United States strongly, Iie 
publmhed as an offset fo Ms. Webster's let 
ler on the opposite ole of the subject! The 
Gonoral says that “the annexation of Tous 


to the United States lo salen the 
jponls al ics iadtiadsiont. and le. cmaanal 7) 


TWENTY-TWO DAYS LATER FROM 
EUROPR. 


‘The steamer Cacepowia arrived at Boston 
on the 23d fram Liverpool, March & She 
Drought out 67 passengers. 

Cotton had maintained its prices, and been 
ip fuir demand, ducing the munth of Februa- 
ty—though, an the 4th instant, the accounts 
state the market had become rather «lull, 
with a slight falling off an prices of common 
and middling qualities, Trade in the manu- 
facjuring distr cis continued brisk. All de+ 
scriptions of grain had advanced un account 
of unfavorable weather. The general aspect 
of businese was favorable. Boney was ex- 
tremely abuitdant, and good bills were readie 
ly discounted af 2 per cent pér sunum 


Incaaxp.—The Trials of Mr. O'Connell 
and others have been conclude, and each 
has been found guilty, but the sentences have 
been deferred until next term, {Nothings 
however, will probably be done with O'Con- 
nell and his arsociates; the moral eHect of 
the vetdict being thought sufhcient to put an 
end tothe repeal movernent Resides, eny- 
hke a hard sentence would only rekiny 
Hame, and make st bum more vehe- 

In the mean ume Mr. O'Connell 
le his way up to London and taken’ 
his place in the House uf Commons The 
state of affairs in _lreland is somewhat chang- 
ed since the verdict was given. There is less 
excitement The Repeal Association, how-, 
ever, continues to hold weekly meetings at 
Concitiation Mall, At the bs wrpat The the 
19th ult, Tom Steele in the Chair, Mr. W. 8. 
O'Brien, M. P. proposed a petition to Parlia- 
ment, setting forth tbe facts connected with’ 
the Inte slate trials, fot genera) adoption. The 
Motion was camed unanimously, and it was, 
ordered that copies should be sent W every 
fiarish in Ireland for signature. 

At the meeting on the 26th, the chair was 
eceupied by Juhn O'Connell, Esq. M. P.— 
He addressed the meeting at considerable 
Jeneth, expressing his gratitude to the people 
of England for the deep feeling of sympathy 
which they had manifested towards the 
Travermers, and the feeling of indiynation 
which had been stirred up by the unfair con- 
duct of Government towards them. He was 
not prepared for such # manifestation of man- 
ly Enghsh feeling. 

A lever was read from Mr. D. O'Connell, 
in which the same sentiments were express- 
ed, and concluded by stating that aa the 
course ‘of debate showed that Ireland had 
nothing to hope but from the restoration of 
her own Parliament, they should continue 
, with renewed efforts to carry peacefully that 
object The mectiny was also addressed by 
Smith O'Bnen and Thomas Steele, Esqrs. ¢ 

The condition of Leland hud been made 
the subject of a thorough discussion ina de- 
bate of two dayn in the House of Lords, and 
one of nine days in the House of Commons, 
The debate though very long, contained 
many ioteresting end eloquent ca 
The Ministry were evatuincd by a vote of 324 
to 225. Mr O'Connell came over from lre- 
Jand and spate near the close of the debate, 
as did the Insh Atiorney General, Mr Smith, 
whois anid to have mad 
successful defence of his course. Soine of 
the papers insinuate that Mr O'Conoell is 
allempung to allay the Repeal agitation, an 
38 again un negotiation with the whigs for a 
mivtual alliance, a bargain upon his part for 
whieb itseems ditheult to conceive what 
equivalent can be offered now that the whigs’ 
are out of power.: ‘ 


Some=xeitement was caused in, London; 
by the receipt of intelligence stating that the 

rench Admiral Thours had seized Tahity! 
Lut subsequeat accounts from Brance that the 
conduct of the Admiral had not received the 
sanction of the French Government, the, ex: 
elementoubsiled. 

On the 3d instant a destructive fire broke 
out in Manchester, » The flames were 30 tor} 
rific, says # Liverpool paper, that the specta- 
tors were deterred from volunteering to work 
the engines which were brought to the spot! 
und it was necessary to send for soldiers to! 
perform that daty. A large block of ware-| 
houses in which the fire onginatedy was whol- 
ly destroyed with its contents. This range of 
slores was 180 feet lony by 120 feet wide, and, 
seven stories in heizht, besides the basement, 
Several other Jarge warehouses and their con 
tents were destroy ed, and the loss us esti 


. at mach over £500,000, 


Bir, Evorett, tho American” Minister; kt 
#tated, has beer for a month on a visit to the 
Rev, Bydney Suuth* 


A dinner to O'Connoll is finally arraaged 
to take place at Convent Garden Theatre, on 


. Tuesday the 12th of March Many teadi 


Jaembers of Partinment will be. present, au 
several pera i 
The Insh provincial papers contines thea 
nouces of the conveyances of large quanti- 
ues of arms ef Crumunitioa to the davierens 


a very able and” 


MR CLAY'S PRINCIPLES 


Froma Circular sij Senator 
publishad ia the Frcout prt 
Oct, 22, 1824, 

*The joiples which would th 
Clay's administration, if elected, are well 
known tothe nation. They have been die 
played upon the Aoor of Conzress for the last 
seventeen years. They constitute a syotem of 
American Policy, based on the Azrculture 
and Manufactures of his own country—spon 
interior as well as foreign commerce—upon 
-internal as well aa sea-board improvement— 
upon the independence of the New Werld, 
and close commercial alliances ith Mexico 
and South Amenca If it 18 said that others 
would pursue the same eystem, We answer, 
that the founder of a system is the natu 
executor of hig.own work, that the most ef- 
ficient proteclor of American Iron, Lead, 
Hemp, Wool, and Cotton, would be the éri- 
umphant champion of the new Tarif; the 
safest friend to Interior Commerce would be 
the Statesman who has proclaimed the Mis- 
aissippi to be thesea of the West; the most 
tealous promoter of Interna) Improvements 
would be the President, who has tnumphed 
over the President who opposed the consinio 
tion of National Roads und Canals. the most 
successful applicant for (reatios with Mexico 
and South America would be the eloquent 
advocate of their own independence.” 

THOMAS HART BENTON. 


Poom tha Washington eoocerponden) of tha Boston 
Cownr 


MR CHOATE 

‘Mr, Choate’s appearance is as sinking as 
thatof any man inthe Senate. When he 
speaks, he always has an atientive and ine 
creasing auditory. No man ia more fluent ta 

ch, or more beautiful in hia language. — 

Je alrnost strugzles with the load of apt illus- 
trations and poetic imagery, furnished by hie 

nich fancy and ready memory, and which, 
while they adom hie speech anit clelight the 
hearer, seem to obstruct the full and even 
flow of his aqguinent. Perhaps Mr Choate’s 
style of speaking 18 fovomalto bein good 
fasto of to pleases eritical eur, but itis de~ 
lightfu to fisteo tohis unbidden luxurious 
How of talk. His nervous sensibility is grest 
A stranger hearing hie Oregon speech, might 
almost have been led to apprehend that be 
would not get on, his agitation of manner was 
s0 apparent [tte undoubtedly tue thal, in 
this respect, he does no} feel what he exhidite. 
The great Duke of Marlborough used to say 
he could hardly drive Ms litle vembling 
body into batile, while his spirit knew no fear. 
Mr. Choate’s ccuntenance is marked by tra- 
ces of the most intense and consiant meatal 
effort.- The veinsof bis faceand hands are 
swollen, and the incessant workings of his 
oe eon si rer] anied aby 4 pee 

upg of hin hand backward and farw 

eer hi Juxuriant head of black curly fein) 
indicates, but toe clearly, that the spurit withs 
im baows no re; 

Probably there 1 not a more popular speaks 
er in Cougress than Mr Choate. - He detizhie 
eve body by hus ready affluence of remark, 
and his keenness and fartlny in debate. 

Mr. Choaie is fully up to the common 
height, has a bright black eye and the Pan 
ofa gentleman. If we were compelled to 
epeak of his defects. of which perhaps he has 
as few as any man, we should say thet he 
lacked aerve. 3 


New Onizans Ecectiox—Theother day 
Se aonounted the eloction of Tuomas Sai- 
pete (Loco) to the Senate of Louwiana, to 
fill a vacancy in that body caused by the 
death of Arseat Hoa; and also that the 
election was changed 10 have been carried by 
fraud, in consequence of foreigners being per- 
matted to rote on naturalization papers which 
bad been Hlegally iseved by Judge Evsiort, 
ofthe etd Court of Lafayette, 

Since then the Legulature 8 Lousiana, 
which at the ime had under investigation 
the conduct of Judge Exsiory in issuing 
these illezal certificates, have taken up the 
pet of its coramittee a, the Judge, aisd 

opted it by a yole of 36 to 9! «This report 

etampe the conduct of Juve Extiory as cen 
(Pept; obarges him with fraud and malfes- 
bance; recommends his removal {ram office; 
‘and doclures the certificates of naturalization 
jmsaed by bis Court VenmeRinn Wegal’ 


(elligemcer 


Dasrm of Grew. Portea—Our papers 
which came by the Westen: mail last ove 
hing annavoee the melancholy tidings of the 
di of Gen. Perea B.Ponrea. Ae died, 
at his residence’ at Niecare Falla, on Wed 
nesday eveniag. * Gen. hee Allied mas: 
high 28d responsible stations, both in ei 
‘Bod military hfe. He was engezed io the 

pated ia eee 


Moet active service, aud 

‘of the most arfuous and brilliant seonss of 
thelant war, Besules Sting many other att, 
ces, he had been a member af the Conpeee 


of the United Bistes, and we ered 


BEGINNINGS oF A Famous EprrorIAL PAGE IN THE First 
NUMBER OF THE SPRINGFIELD “DAILY REPUBLICAN.” 


THE EDITORIAL 


3. The presence of the editorial page makes jour- 
nalism worth while, in the higher sense. Only 
through the consciousness of its editorial powers does 
a newspaper get a lively realization of its responsibil- 
ity to the public, though this responsibility is by no 
means limited to the editorial page. 

4. The presence of an editorial column renders un- 
necessary and tends to discourage the practice, which 
even the publisher sanctioning it is likely to admit to 
be reprehensible, of coloring news with editorial opin- 
ion. It makes it easier to print both sides in the news 
instead of suppressing what is unfavorable to the pa- 
per’s side, while “playing up” what is favorable. 

5. The editorial page brings within reach one of 
the luxuries of journalism—recognition abroad. For 
the editor of the small paper, such recognition is per- 
sonal. His editorials are reprinted; his clever para- 
graphs go chuckling about the state. Through the ex- 
change of badinage he makes friends with other edi- 
tors. The horizon of his influence broadens indefi- 
nitely. He gets more fun out of life. In the case of 
the large paper, the recognition is institutional, but by 
no means lacking in personal satisfaction to every- 
body, from the publisher to the cub. 

6. An editorial column enables the paper ‘to ex- 
press prevailing local opinion on public questions—a 
reflecting process that even the cynical cannot deny 
assists popular government. On the other hand, the 
editorial column affords the only legitimate means by 

which a newspaper may attempt to exercise leader- 
ship. Through this means of expression it can “de- 


24 


WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH 


fend the weak and the new idea,” or as another puts 
it, “fight for the unorganized classes in society,” or “act 
as attorney for the people who pay it ten cents a 
week.” 

Horace White when editor of the New York Eve- 
ning Post thus commented on the value of the editor- 
ial page: 

“A newspaper which merely inked over a certain 
amount of white paper each day might be a good col- 
lector of news, it might be successful as a business 
venture; but it could leave no mark upon its time, 
and could have no history.” 

Or as the Detroit News puts it: 


It is doubtless true that some editorial pages have ceased 
to be an influence, but that is because they ought so to 
cease. Influence is based on confidence, and confidence 
is built on a daily, yearly loyalty to truth, a tested vision 
which foresees right directions, and an uncompromising 
devotion to the principles of righteousness and justice no 
matter how positively unpopular for the time being these 
may be. 

Editorial pages which have not been prostituted to pri- 
vate purposes, which are not mere mouthpieces for the 
predacious few against the many, have not lost their in- 
fluence. There is not an editorial page in the country 
that stands for the general trend of righteousness, that 
instinctively turns its strength to succor the weak, that 
trenchantly attacks the sinister influences which would 
undermine liberty and morality, that can complain of pub- 
lic disregard. Wherever a man or staff of men speak 
out plainly for what they hold to be right for all, and 
speak from deep conviction, and speak rationally; where- 


25 


THE EDITORIAL 


ever there is a willingness to give the deep reason for 
the faith that is expressed, there is no complaint of public 
indifference and disregard. . . . The statement that people 
do not read editorials comes with most suspicious fre- 
quency from those who could pursue their evil plans to 
better advantage if the people really could be persuaded 
not to read editorials. Their statement is not possible 
of belief by any newspaper whose editorial duties are 
honestly performed. The people frequently say what they 
think of editorials which is proof of the reading they 
receive. 


It would be interesting to know the variety of reasons 
which guide so many people to the reading of editorials. 
One man goes to them for the summing up of matters, 
another for a knowledge of the arguments which may be 
made on either side of an issue, another for the controlling 
tendencies of communal thought, another for inspiration, 
another because the thoughtful side of newspaper work 
appeals to him as much as does the reportorial side, an- 
other because in the maze of conflicting opinions he 
wants some clew by following which he may come to his 
own conclusion. 

For various reasons, then, men and women read the 
editorials, and the knowledge of their watchful eyes and 
alert minds is a constant inspiration to renewed care and 
labor. This body of readers, though doubtless much 
smaller than the total number of readers, is really the 
influential leaven in society. They belong to the race of 
thinkers, to those who go behind the story for its mean- 
ings, behind the event for its interpretation, behind the 
social symptom for the social cause, behind the medley 
of happenings for the pattern of significant tendencies 
and influences that is being woven. 


26 


WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH 


Editorials in the Magazines.—Separate consid- 
eration might be given to the changing fortunes of the 
magazine editorial page; but the fact that an editorial 
is an editorial, wherever printed, renders separate 
treatment unnecessary. 

We are sometimes told that “the best output of 
opinion is in magazines of conviction and purpose.” 
This may be granted without detracting from the im- 
portance of opinion in newspapers of like conviction 
and purpose. Argument as to which have the greater 
influence would be profitless. 

Generally speaking, the monthly magazines, except 
the reviews, regard expression of editorial opinion as 
a minor matter. 

The weekly reviews, on the other hand, and the 
propaganda publications, are at the other extreme of 
self-expression. Editorial opinion is their whole life. 
The Nation, the New Republic, the Review, are at the 
head of a long column of vigorous exponents of views 
on everything in general or some one thing in parti- 
cular. 

Between the two extremes come the weeklies such 
as Collier's, the Saturday Evening Post, Leslie’s, the 
Independent, the Outlook and many others which, in a 
greater or less degree, subordinate editorial opinion 
to general articles, fiction, or contributed discussions. 

The policies and the rules of procedure of the 
periodicals in our own country and abroad offer an in- 
teresting field of study. The newspapers, however, 
seem closer to people in the mass, and with their ag- 
gregate daily circulation far exceeding the total num- 


27 


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WEAKNESS AND STRENGTH 


ber of persons in the country, they are, or should be, 
the great highway of ideas to and from the mind of 
the nation. In the choice of illustrative selections for 
this book, preference has been given*to examples from 
newspapers. 


CHAPTER III 


THE EDITOR AND HIS READERS 


An editorial writer who becomes so jaded that he 
ceases to get inspiration from his readers should try 
producing something else than editorial copy. He can 
never hope to supply a market to which he has grown 
indifferent. The first thrill of publication will not, 
to be sure, follow the beginner through years and 
decades of daily appearance in print, but he does not 
lose—dare not lose—the warm consciousness of those 
who “think his thoughts after him,” whether they are 
to be visualized as a little group or a great concourse 
of thousands, | 

If the English essayists of the eighteenth century 
could have surveyed the two hundred years to follow, 
they might have been justified in feeling little concern 
as to what the readers of their own day thought of 
them. The editorial essayist of to-day, however, can 
not look forward to a century of appreciation. He 
cannot appeal from the present to the future. His 
medium is ephemeral. His writing is for the public 
of that same hour. “It is his fate not to be studied 
but simply to be read.” 

The Editor’s Public.—Except in the case of the 
editor of a class publication, every editorial writer is 


30 


THE EDITOR AND HIS READERS 


blessed with several possible publics, There are many 
periodicals, and doubtless a few newspapers, which 
are read by people of practically equal intelligence and 
education and having the same assortment of predomi- 
nant interests. But most newspapers, large or small, 
reach, on the one hand, a public that may without 
flattery be called intellectual and, at the other extreme, 
a public little better than illiterate, and, in between, 
as many grades as one cares to make, Y The ordinary 
newspaper has one public whose predominant interest 
is business; others who are concerned primarily with 
politics, finance, housekeeping, sports.) 

‘It is important that an editor should have a “good. 
working knowledge” of his constituents. )If his paper 
is a small one, this is comparatively easy. He need 
only look up and down the street. If it is a metropo- 
litan paper, he can learn much by personal observa- 
tion and something through the circulation depart- 
ment.“ He should make it his business to meet his 
various publics, not only mind to mind in the editorial 
column, but face to face in the business office, store, 
club, shops, streets.) 

Beware of a Narrow Policy.<Some editors ex- 
press the belief that it is a waste of time to write for 
any other than what they call the ruling class.) To 
their minds public opinion and public policies are 
shaped by a numerically small group of educated and 
thoughtful people. Some editors write almost ex- 
clusively for this public, well aware that they are go- 
ing over the heads of the majority of those who buy 
the paper. Possiby this narrow policy returns a 


31 


THE EDITORIAL 


greater amount of personal satisfaction to the editor 
than a more democratic plan. But it seems hardly 
to meet the newspaper ideal of “the greatest useful- 
ness.” 

It seems hardly fair to the community. In a democ- 
racy, it is difficult to see how a conscientious editor 
can accept and labor to perpetuate an aristocracy of 
government. ( His aim should be rather to stimulate 
participation in public affairs on the part of the un- 
educated and relatively unthinking classes as well as 
the better informed. ) Whether or not he goes to the 
length of attempting to popularize his columns by 
typographical expedients for making them easier to 
read—a matter which is discussed in another chapter 
—he may at least popularize them somewhat through 
his choice of subjects. Instead of a contemptuous at- 
titude opposed to “writing for the mob,” he may well 
regard it as worth while to write for the citizen and 
the human being of whatever estate. No editorial 
office can safely discard the democratic spirit. 

More and more, also, account will be taken of the 
woman reader and the interests which are peculiarly 
hers. 

The Mystery of Public Opinion.—The editor’s 
study of his public includes investigation of the elu- 
sive phenomenon called public opinion. The vocation 
of editorial writing is a continuous course in applied 
psychology. The psychology of the “mob mind” has 
received exhaustive treatment at the hands of scien- 
tific observers, and since it constitutes one phase of 
the phenomenon of public opinion, it is worth the 


32 


THE EDITOR AND HIS READERS 


attention of any one dealing with the collective mind 
of society. 

/Vhere are two sides to the editor’s interest in the 
subject of public opinion. First, by what influences 
it is created, strengthened, or guided. Second, by 
what means and how accurately public opinion on 
any given question may be measured. \ 

Observation along the line of the first problem soon 
reveals its extreme difficulty. Nothing flares up more 
suddenly,—often unexpectedly,—subsides more quick- 
ly, is more volatile, than the interest or conviction of 
the public regarding any of its concerns. On the other 
hand, nothing is more stubborn and relentless than is 
this same public opinion at times. But it is a publicist 
of very poor metal who despairs of approximating 
an understanding of these subtle forces. No editor 
can afford to be indifferent to them, or neglect any 
opportunity for their study. A practical understand- 
ing of the editorial as a force is the only object in 
trying to master the editorial as a form. 

Hard to Read the Public Mind.—With regard to 
the second problem, the accurate measuring of pub- 
lic opinion, there is even less hope of dependable re- 
sults. On a great question before the public, such, for 
example, as the question of whether or not the United 
States should enter the League of Nations, men of 
the widest experience in reading the public mind held 
diametrically opposite views as to the attitude of the 
American people. The amazing mistakes made by 
skilled politicians and statesmen in attempting to 
gauge the effect of a political maneuver, contribute 


33 


THE EDITORIAL 


further evidence as to the extreme difficulty of the 
problem. It would be foolish, however, to deny that 
many men—many editors—judge correctly the atti- 
tude of the public much oftener than incorrectly. In- 
deed there are men whose success in foreseeing the re- 
actions of the public to certain stimuli wins for them 
the reputation of having a special sense of almost un- 
canny keenness. However that may be, it would be 
a poor sort of editor who did not devote his best 
powers to acquiring facility in reading the thoughts 
of the public. He will early learn not to be misled 
by the clamor of those who take issue with him on 
some question. Those who approve are silent: those 
who disapprove are noisy. It is one of the unhappy 
features of editorial work that those who like what 
the editor says rarely tell him so. People have an 
unfortunate diffidence about expressing appreciation. 
Almost Wears a Halo.—One of the advantages 
that an editor has in his dealings with the public is 
the fact that he will be “institutionalized” by his read- 
ers even though he is editor of only a small paper 
and is personally known to many. The debate as to 
the relative advantages and disadvantages of the per- 
sonal journalism of the past—persisting to-day in the 
country press—or the institutional journalism of our 
cities, does not concern us here. But, as to the stand- 
ing of the editorial writer, big or little, it can hardly 
be questioned that his authority is augmented by the 
prestige of the business institution and news institu- 
tion from which proceeds the paper itself. 
Newspapers take full advantage of this fact, as in 


34 


THE EDITOR AND HIS READERS 


the case of a New York paper which, when severely 
criticized by a President of the United States, replied 
merely, “The President is an incident in American his- 
tory; this paper is an institution.” 

Sources of Prestige—An interesting study might 
be made of the psychological basis for the prestige of 
a newspaper as an institution: 

I. Size of its organizations has something to do 
with it: the human mind is always impressed by big- 
ness and complexity. 

2. Magnificence of its visible property is another 
element: it is very difficult to get the point of view 
of some‘ publishers that a newspaper plant is merely 
a factory and should be located where land values 
are lower than at a conspicuous site in the heart of 
the town or city. 

3. The newspaper itself is a contributing factor 
—its size, age, and history of achievement. 

4. The number of its readers means much as to 
its impressiveness: curiously enough, our respect for 
what we read is increased in direct ratio to the num- 
ber of others we think of as reading it. In other 
words, the readers themselves contribute to the pres- 
tige which the newspaper has for them. This is what 
is meant by the psychology of print: print impresses 
us because of its possibilities of human appeal. Or, as 
Rollo Ogden, editor of the New York Evening Post, 
puts it, “As the speaker gets from his hearers in mist 
what he gives back in shower, so the newspaper re- 
ceives from the public as well as gives to it. Too 
often it gets as dust what it gives back as mud, but 


35 


THE EDITORIAL 


that does not alter the relation. Action and reaction 
are all the while going on between the press and its 
patrons.” This basis for an editor’s prestige is im- 
portant even in the case of the personal journalism 
of rural communities. 

Backing the Editor Needs.—In order to have a 
fair chance with the public, an editor must have back 
of him a newspaper which is a fit vehicle for editorial 
writing having distinctive characteristics. 

I. It must be a well-fed newspaper, not an object 
of charity. It is contrary to human nature to respect 
very deeply the opinions of any man whose attempts 
at business success have failed. In many cases, this is, 
of course, a most unfair judgment. Current jokes 
notwithstanding, it is literally true that men best able 
to give good advice on financial problems of the state 
or nation are, in some cases, failures in managing their 
own financial affairs. But the judgment of the public 
takes little account of exceptions. The editor of the 
small newspaper who expects to have his opinions on 
street paving, pool halls, taxes, religion, or politics 
seriously considered must have demonstrated the 
soundness of his judgments in matters affecting his 
own personal interests. There are noteworthy excep- 
tions, but the rule holds. Often the best means of 
improving the editorial character of a run-down news- 
paper is to give the editor a course of training in cost 
finding and business management. 

2. Inorder to have a fair chance that what he says 
editorially will have its due weight, the editor’s news- 
paper must have decent, or better, standards in its 

36 


THE EDITOR AND HIS READERS 


handling of news and advertising. Nothing so quickly 
compromises the influence of a newspaper as dishon- 
esty and unfairness in handling the news. No newspa- 
per’s readers fail to detect a policy of news suppress- 
ion or news coloring. It is almost pathetic to see a 
great newspaper attempting to fool its public by these 
means. However excellent the editorial page of such 
a paper, it has little chance of winning public esteem. 
Moreover, the taint from an untruthful or indecent 
advertisement, no matter in what part of the paper, 
penetrates to the editorial page. The whole matter 
may be expressed by paraphrasing a classical retort: 
I cannot hear what that paper says editorially because 
of what it zs in its news and advertising. 

3. To be forceful editorially, a newspaper must 
have purposes visible to the public, beyond the com- 
mercial purpose of selling news and advertising. This 
principle is not contradictory to the one given that a 
newspaper must be successful in a business way. 
Only the successful newspaper can afford the luxury 
of aims that transcend the commercial plane. It is the 
paper which has demonstrated to its public that it will 
suffer financial loss rather than compromise a prin- 
ciple; that it will adopt policies that do not pay in 
money; that it will spend its own money to further 
objects which it is recommending to its public—only 
such a newspaper affords its editor a chance to speak 
without having his sincerity and unselfishness ques- 
tioned. 

4. Very closely allied with the preceding is the re- 
quirement that, to give its editor the point of vantage 


37 


THE EDITORIAL 


which he deserves, the ownership of a newspaper must 
not be subservient to selfish or partisan or political in- 
terests. Perhaps it is going too far to say that the 
editors of a party organ cannot wield a great influ- 
ence. It would be foolish to deny that, during the 
last century, they were the most influential of all edi- 
tors. But tendencies in journalism show clearly that 
great advantages are possessed by the paper which is, 
to a considerable degree at least, independent of party 
affiliations. It is maintained by some that there is a 
sharp distinction here between metropolitan and 
country journalism; that while city papers need poli- 
tical independence the small-town paper must have 
back of it an organized group such as a political party 
—a nucleus of support. It is difficult to see the force 
of this distinction further than that it describes a pres- 
ent condition but an obsolescent one. The growth of ° 
independent journalism has been more rapid in large 
than in small communities, but it is impossible not to 
believe that independence in politics is bound to in- 
crease steadily among country newspapers. 

5. It goes without discussion that an editor can 
make his voice heard only when the ownership of the 
paper has no selfish interests in conflict with the pub- 
lic interest. Competent observers have reported that 
in this respect conditions in journalism are deteriorat- 
ing; that, more and more, the owners of newspapers— 
large newspapers—as a natural result of their great 
financial resources are more frequently than formerly 
found among the stockholders in public service cor- 
porations, financial institutions subject to public regu- 


38 


THE EDITOR AND HIS READERS 


lations, and real estate exploitation schemes. If this 
is true, it forebodes an evil day for metropolitan jour- 
nalism. And it helps to explain the astonishing lack 
of influence of the metropolitan press, as sometimes 
betrayed in city elections. 

Taking an Inventory.—Assuming, then, that the 
editor appreciates the importance of understanding his 
public and has attained a reasonable degree of such 
understanding, and assuming that his newspaper is a 
suitable medium through which to reach the public, he 
has a reasonable chance of succeeding in his work: 

1. If he can learn to pick out of the day’s jumble 
the significant things suitable for editorial handling. 

2. If he can sense maladjustments where every- 
thing is apparently going smoothly. 

3. If he can appreciate excellencies that others are 
too busy or too obtuse to see. 

4. If his indignation kindles at the injustice 
ignored by the dulled sensibilities of the crowd. 

5. If he can look beyond the present fact to its 
consequences a generation ahead, 

6. If he has enough philosophy of life to insure 
fundamental consistency in the positions he takes. 

7. If he is “historically minded’’—possesses a his- 
torical perspective. ) 

8. If he can break bonds of inertia in which most 
people lie helpless. 

g. If he can pass by the non-essentials of a sub- 
ject to the real heart of the matter. 

10. If he knows when and how to be severe, kind- 
ly, ironical, gay, sentimental, brilliant, serious. 


39 


THE EDIFORTAL 


11. If he can adjust subject to reader, putting the 
right thing first, and the right thing last. 

12. If he knows people well enough to be chari- 
table. 

13. If he has the instincts of an artist to guide him 
in judging when a piece of editorial work is well done. 

14. If he has learned how to go to nature for re- 
newal of courage and broadening of sympathies. 

15. If, through a sense of humor or any other, 
means, he has developed a balanced sanity as regards 
his own importance. 

16. If he is strong enough so that he may safely let 
his readers see that he doesn’t believe all truth to be 
on his side and all error on the other side. 

17. If, in the words of Charles Dana, he is “orig- 
inal, strong, and bold enough to make his opinions a 
matter of consequence to the public.” 

18, If, in addition to being such well-known things 
as honest, independent, public spirited and well in- 
formed, he is also in dead earnest as to the profes- 
sional nature of his relations to the community. 

19. If he knows when to stay “on the fence’ and 
when to get off, and can do both courageously. 

20. If he realizes that fads and hobbies are only 
the “poor relations” of principles and policies. 

21, If he can keep balance between his national 
and his world viewpoints. 

22. If he has enough “keel” so that he can change 
his course, even in a stiff breeze, without capsizing. 

23. If he likes people well enough to enjoy seeing 


40 


THE EDITOR AND HIS READERS 


them happy and to help make them happy, even if he 
has to make them discontented first. 

24. If he is not too hungry for popularity nor too 
much above caring for it. 

25. If he is free from the itch for office—no mat- 
ter if it is true that there are usually fifty editors in 
Congress. He might make an admirable official, but 
not while being a good editor. 

26. If he can make the important international 
question seem as real as the local contest for the post- 
office. 

27. If he can take stock of himself once in a while, 
using tests such as these “ifs” for inventory purposes, 
without having his spontaniety inhibited by over-self- 
consciousness. 

To the discussion of some of these “ifs” and their 
consequences succeeding chapters will be devoted. 


CHAPTER IV 


MATERIALS FOR EDITORIALS 


At first thought, it seems that if the editor has any 
difficulties with material, they will be difficulties of 
selection, not of discovery. Unlike the news writer, 
whose sphere is limited to the world of events, he can 
go anywhere for his subjects—to current history, to 
philosophy, to esthetics, to ethics, to religion. And yet 
this advantage in breadth of field does not make his 
task an easier one than the news writer’s. It is, in 
fact, much harder. There are editors to whom the 
thought of the gaping columns to be filled day after 
day becomes a nightmare. 

The Reporter’s Work and the Editor’s.—The 
editor who finds himself writing without any prelim- 
inary hard labor in gathering materials may well be 
suspicious as to the merit of his work. Partisan polli- 
tics is the lazy editor’s refuge. It enables him to fill” 
numberless columns easily, but often vainly. 

The old-fashioned editorial page was almost wholly 
political and it must be admitted that it had a certain 
virility. But it outlived its usefulness, and in so do- 
ing did much to depreciate editorial influence. 

The pitfall of the reporter who becomes an editorial 
writer is the expectation that he can write editorials 


42 


MATERIALS FOR EDITORIALS 


as readily as he has been in the habit of writing news 
stories. As a reporter he learned to gather facts and 
record them, accurately, tersely, vividly. He was not 
much more than a conduit of information. Little or 
nothing of himself went into the story—that would 
have ruined his usefulness as a reporter. The instant 
he acquired all the available facts, he was ready to 
write. 

These things are not true of the editorial writer. It 
is most unfortunate if he expects to write easily. 
When he has gathered the facts about an event—all 
the facts that the reporter needs—it is probable that 
he has taken only the first step in his labor of amassing 
material. He must have recourse to sources for 
which the reporter, as a reporter, cares nothing—al- 
though it is quite true that the reporter will be a better 
equipped man, and a better reporter, if his informa- 
tion and culture go beyond the mere working require- 
ments of his craft. 

However, the editorial writer is, in a sense, a re- 
porter—a reporter on Truth—with the same need to 
verify information, to be sure he is right, to be ac- 
curate in every detail. 

The Editorial Goes Far Beyond the News Story. 

—Most editorials are suggested by the news of the 
day. Even if they are not always discussions of cur- 
rent events, they have timeliness, as a rule, in the 
sense of being related to some subject already above 
"the threshold of public consciousness. Just as the re- 
porter finds it desirable sometimes to seek a “peg’’ on 
which to hang his news story, so the editorial writer is 


43 


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MATERIALS FOR EDITORIALS 


most confident of being read when he can hang his 
discussion upon a “peg” of present interest. 

Broadly speaking, an editorial includes some or all 
of the facts of the news story plus associated facts, 
opinions as to the prophecy or threat hidden in the 
fact, emotional elements, purposes, moral qualities, 
tone, style, service value. 

Illustrations of these distinctions can be found in 
almost any issue of any newspaper. For example, a 
news story related the facts as to the death of a young 
woman in Philadelphia and told of her gift of $1,000 
to the Philadelphia orchestra. Some time afterwards 
an editorial appeared in the Public Ledger: 


THE GIRL AND THE MILLION- 
AIRE 


Facts in the News Story 


A girl recently passed away in Phila- 
delphia and in her will was found a 
bequest of $1000 for the Philadelphia 
Orchestra. 


Associated Facts 


Three weeks later a New York mil- 
lionaire passed away and left millions 
of dollars for the furtherance of music. 


Significance of the Facts 


While there was a great difference 
in the amounts involved, the girl and 
the millionaire had a oneness of pur- 
pose; to perpetuate a force in our lives 
that the war has made us feel for the 
first time in a way that we never 
dreamed of. 


45 


THE EDITORIAL 


Broader Aspects of the Subject 


Before the war music was an adjunct 
in our lives. Then our boys went to 
the camps and over to France, and we 
realized the truth of Major General 
Bell’s aphorism that “a singing nation 
is a winning nation.” We began to 
realize that music was something more 
than a mere art of the dilettante or 
the cultured ; we saw in it a force. Our 
soldiers felt it and we who remained 
at home felt it. Our boys literally sang 
their way to victory and the home army 
sang as they worked. Every home sud- 
denly realized and felt the power of 
music. Men who had a respect for 
music, but nothing more, grasped the 
power that lay in the musical score and 
the work that is sung. And as our re- 
turning soldiers are already demanding 
that they shall have music at home as 
they had in the camps, it is a conserva- 
tive statement which prophesies that the 
pre-war status of music in America will 
never return. 


Interpretative Comment 


Already the indications in Philadel- 
phia point to the truth of this prophecy. 
The management of the Philadelphia 
Orchestra reports an unprecedented de- 
mand for season tickets for the com- 
ing winter’s concerts, pointing to audi- 
ences that will test the capacity of the 
Academy of Music. 


Applying Facts with Purpose to 
Benefit the Life of the City 


But we must go farther than this, 
and both the Philadelphia girl and the 
New York millionaire have shown us 
the way. We should strengthen and 
perpetuate those institutions that will 


46 


MATERIALS FOR EDITORIALS 


insure good music, not only now, but 
for our children. In Philadelphia this 
naturally takes the form of perpetuat- 
ing our orchestra, now the first of 
symphony orchestras in America. To 
leave a bequest to an orchestra does 
not occur to many of us when we make 
our wills. But it should. . 


Appeal to Moral Sense of Usefulness 


Hundreds there are in this city who 
could leave a bequest as modest as did 
this far-seeing girl to the orchestra; 
scores there are to whom five or ten 
thousand dollars would be an easy pos- 
sibility for such a bequest. Few be- 
quests are more permanent, because the 
money is never spent; it is conserva- 
tively invested and only the interest is 
spent on the orchestra. So that year 
after year our money goes on working 
for our children and our children’s chil- 
dren, making possible to them a force 
in our daily lives, the power and po- 
tentiality of which we are only now 
beginning to grasp. We cannot leave 
a more beautiful legacy for our chil- 
dren as was so wisely seen by the girl 
and the miliionaire. 


A Question of the Right Proportion.—1. Read- 
ing, of course, is the editor’s primary source of ma- 
terial. And of all reading, the most obvious sort is 
newspaper reading. Not only must he read, but he 
must systematically store the facts of current history 
so as to have a well organized knowledge of events 
longitudinally, as they evolve, and transversely, in all 
their complex relations. In other words, either in a 
memory daybook and ledger, or by some more reliable 


47 


THE EDITORIAL 


recording and filing system, he must keep open ac- 
counts with affairs. 

Bookeeping the News.—One editor has developed 
a method which he calls bookkeeping the news. He 
actually enters, in what might be called his daybook, 
brief memoranda of significant events, beginning each 
entry with its appropriate catch word. From time to 
time he transfers these notes to a larger record, col- 
lecting into one “account” the memoranda bearing on 
any one subject. This latter book is his current his- 
tory ledger. In it he maintains accounts with public 
men, with national issues, such as organized labor, the 
tariff, and immigration, and with matters of local in- 
terest. 

More flexible mechanically is a card index system. 
Superior as a labor saving method is an envelope sys- 
tem. Any one can work these devices out for him- 
self. The exact method used is unimportant. The 
vital thing is that the editorial writer, unless he has a 
truly phenomenal memory, should make use of some 
convenient means for keeping available an adequate 
fund of information on current affairs. The public has 
a short memory, the editor must have a long one. The 
public judges the direction in which events are moving 
by a survey based on the happenings of a few weeks 
or a few months; the editor must have a much greater 
perspective. He must be able, as it were, to plot the 
curve of any developing incident or movement in so- 
cial or politi¢éal affairs with a certainty that consti- 
tutes him something of a prophet. An editorial page 

48 


MATERIALS FOR EDITORIALS 


Enformed from such a systematic storehouse is en- 
tiched thereby beyond all danger of superficiality. 

From inquiries answered by more than one hundred 
editors—mostly outside of metropolitan journalism— 
it appears that the reading habits of many editors may 
be described as follows: 

Ninety per cent of their reading time is devoted to 
newspapers and magazines. 

Nine per cent to miscellaneous books. 

One per cent to reference books. 

It is safe to say that the reading habits of the edi- 
tor who is really meeting his obligations to the public 
will show a division of time somewhat like this: 

Forty per cent, newspapers and magazines. 

Forty per cent, miscellaneous books. 

Twenty per cent, reference books. 

In metropolitan journalism where editorial writers 
are employed for that work alone and are expected to 
become specialists in certain lines, the latter schedule 
is not only closely approximated, but in some cases im- 
proved upon as regards the proportion of time de- 
voted to reading ephemeral publications. Books that 
help the editor get at the heart of things take their 
rightful place in the regard of such an editor. He 
has adopted one of the prime means of achieving the 
right to lead the thoughts of his readers. 

Needs to Have Eyes That See.—2. In gathering 
his materials, the editor, like the reporter, makes con- 
stant use of observation. Training as a reporter, 
which teaches him to see things as they are and see 
everything, proves invaluable. We have heard that 


49 


THE EDITORIAL 


there are sermons in stones. Likewise material for 
editorials may be seen on every hand by the eye of the 
trained reporter. Such a commonplace thing as dirt, 
for example, may lead the mind by inevitable associa- 
tion to some of the most vital economic questions of 
our day. . 
Without unduly emphasizing the value of observa- 
tion, it may be said that the editor of the Chicago 
newspaper who refused to write an editorial against 
obstruction of the sidewalk by truck handlers in the 
wholesale district until he had gone out and walked 
around a block or two of obstructions, so as to get a 
vivid, first-hand knowledge of the evil, was following 
the right principle. 
Importance of Reflection.—3. The third source 
of materials for editorial writing is reflection. A fe- 
porter must be mentally keen and resourceful, he 
must be able to grasp all the essentials of the story 
and to organize it quickly and well; but with the deep- 
er reflection-which-seeks-out-first_causes and ultimate 
effects and hidden meanings, he has, as a’ reporter, 
little to do. In the editorial writer the habit of reflec- 
tion often marks the difference between pitiful dilet- 
tantism and a manifest power of understanding. 
People Are an “Ingredient” of Editorials.—4, 
Daily conversation with all kinds of people is another 
main source of editorial ideas. It not only guides the 
writer to material that has lively interest for his read- 
ers, but it tends to keep him sane, tolerant, practical. 
In this regard the editor of the small paper has a con- 
siderable advantage over his city colleague. He meets 


50 


MATERIALS FOR EDITORIALS 


his public daily and knows what they are thinking and 
feeling and doing. The editor in a city, who talks 
only with men of his own social group, almost inevi- 
tably comes to write largely for that group. In some 
cases, such a narrow view of the world fits in well 
enough with the policy of the paper. But a paper 
built along such narrow lines is really more provincial 
than the smallest of its rural contemporaries. To get 
out among men—all kinds of men—is one of the edi- 
tor’s best rules of action. Perhaps it is because the re- 
porter’s work brings him into close relation with all 
sorts of people that it is somewhat regarded as a pre- 
requisite for editorial writing. A good reporter can 
hardly become an a priori editor. 

Important to Have Learned from Life.—s. Ex- 
perience, the fifth main source from which an editorial 
writer gets his material, is, of course, the determining 
factor in what the editor really amounts to as a man. 
Through it he has evolved a philosophy of life—a 
group of principles of action, and a hierarchy of 
values—which is manifest in the tone and spirit of 
what ne writes. An editor should be a real man. He 
should be humanized and socialized. Experience is 
the large factor in the production of such a result. 
One of the most common criticisms made of the edi- 
tor is aimed at his assumption of inerrancy. Exper- 
ience should do much to lead the editor away from 
this unfortunate habit of taking himself too seriously. 
His profession as a journalist he can not regard too 
highly, but this does not justify his assumption of an 
ex cathedra attitude in his writing. It is a mere truism 


51 


THE EDITORIAL 


to say that only to the degree that he has experienced 
life can he hope to throw any light on the problems 
of life for others. k 

“Have something to write about,” is admittedly the 
first rule for an editor. Indeed, some make the mis- 
take of saying that it is the only essential. 

Knowledge Is Not All.—‘The only preparation 
needed by an editor,” declares one, “is a thorough 
education in history, economics, sociologly, science, and 
literature.” It is fairly clear that experience does not 
justify such a view. Knowledge alone does not make 
an editor, much less knowledge derived from books 
alone. It cannot be too often repeated that the short- 
comings of newspaper editorials to-day are not due so 
much to a lack of knowledge as to a lack of wisdom in 
the selection and treatment of subjects; lack of a 
definite purpose, judiciously chosen with the reader in 
mind; lack of skill in organization and actual writing 
of the editorial—in other words, lack of what might 
rightfully be called editorial technique. 

Keeping on hand a good ‘stock of materials for the 
editorial column is the first part of the editor’s work, 
and it is also the hardest part, often tedious and time- 
consuming. But the second step in handling the ma- 
terials is not less important: the selection of the best 
subjects from the mass of things that might be chosen. 
Doing this successfully will involve either a conscious 
or unconscious charting of the interests of the typical 
reader. | 

Tabulating Readers’ Interests——The successful 
editor of a popular magazine has explained how he 


52 


MATERIALS FOR EDITORIALS 


has analyzed the interests of his typical reader and has 
even drawn a diagram setting forth graphically all 
these interests. He has constant reference to this dia- 
gram while he is laying out an issue of his magazine. 
He sees to it that every reader-interest is appealed to 
in each number, or at least in the numbers covering a 
brief period. The readers’ interests, not the editor’s, 
determine the choice of subjects. 

Selection of editorial subjects, then, can be judi- 
ciously made only by the tests of reader interests—la- 
tent, if not active, interests. If the editor should 
make a diagrammatic analysis of matters of chief con- 
cern to the typical reader, he would probably credit 
him with primary interests pertaining to his home, 
family, health, business, friends; and secondary inter 
ests in the direction of recreation, self culture, dress, 
sports, romance, science and art, unusual incidents, ex- 
ceptional people. Out of the relations of the individ- 
ual to such varied interests come human problems. 
The education of the editor involves painstaking study 
in this field. As one editor puts it: 

“The topic presenting itself either for comment or 
discussion may be important or unimportant without 
being necessarily available or unavailable. Being an 
editorial writer he instinctively estimates its value as 
a text. If it appeals to his knowledge, his experience, 
or his imagination; if it awakens memories, provokes 
comparisons, draws upon his stored information, it 
matters little to him whether it is intrinsically impor- 
tant. It is his business as an editorial writer to give 
it an importance, or at least, an interest, it does not 


53 


THE EDITORIAL 


itself possess, to infuse into his subject Some ie ex- 
tracted from his own intellectual vitality.” 

Road Signs That Point the Way.—Wise selec- 
tion of materials for editorial subjects, also requires 
consideration of such questions as these: 

I. Is too much or too little emphasis being placed 
on subjects of merely local interest, state interest, na- 
tional, world? Doubtless the proper proportion to be | 
maintained in each realm varies from day to day. At 
critical periods in the World War all editorials for 
days at a stretch dealt only with the one subject in the 
public mind. Similarly, a crisis in local affairs may 
cause a swing in that direction. But under normal 
conditions, the editor has opportunity to see that no 
important field is neglected. 

2. Is the element of timeliness strong enough in 
the editorial page? Happily this part of the news- 
paper has enjoyed a degree of emancipation from the 
ruinous dominance of Speed. It is not likely that any 
newspaper ever boasted of having scored an editorial 
“beat” on its competitors. It is to be hoped that it 
may become more and more the distinguishing merit 
of the editorial page that it delays comment until 
comment can be informed by sound and deliberate 
judgment. Nevertheless it would be a foolish editor 
who would undervalue timeliness. 

3. Is there variety enough of editorial subjects to 
satisfy a wide diversity of tastes? Is the apportion- — 
ment of space among them judicious? Is there a suc- 
cessful balancing of information, interpretation, argu- 
ment, persuasion, and entertainment? Or at least, is 


54 


The Truth, Without Courting Povor or Peering Condewaaticn 


THE KANSAS CITY POS 


PUBLISHED Mi THEN HEART OF AMERICA. 


BURRIS JENKINS, Editer and Publisher 

OICK OMITH, Mansging Editor, MAZ LEVAND, Business Manager 

Mafl Subscription Rates—Daily and Bunday, 16 cents a week; 65 cents 
@ month; $3.90 for siz months; $7.80 @ year. Daily only, $4.00 a years 
Sunday only, $2,60 @ year, 

wed BLM YT Pov Offre ce Si-cless maiter. | far < ae CARRIER—In Kansas City, 10 ceats ger week; 46 cents per month 
7 a-RIPTION TERMS BY MAIL 44 in copy, 3 cents daily, 6 cents Sunday. 
ee hee eaves Auge A Tie BY CARRIER—Outside of Kansse City, 15 cents per week; 65 cents 

Ty7-¥(0; 6moe. 85.50; mos.33; Imo. 3h War per won:d. Singiv copy, & eonts daily, 6 conts ony, 

Baerhag, wish Ma azine. Financial Review, 20d dl * * s Sd 


Post: 


The Foening 


i al D 
Sew York, Saterday, November t, 1918. 


eee 
Publivhed a: 20 Vesey Street _doily except 

, Owned by New York Evening Post, 

ident: Roto Ogden, 2 Vesey | View 

— New Yerk. Secretary end Treasurer: | to 
iiltom Haren, 2 Vesey Sircet. New Vork | gta, 


Book Sectioa. $2.50 [elie 4 
aW Mes. & Toure. $4 yearly 

a Wat burs., Sat., H yearly root 

Westly Bask Rertee—31 yearly; Co $1.0, for 


A acw otty abartes. 


3 
& A million people tm tem pear, 
a 


posed qrciger elitr on, mind Pertertes for Mansas City, @riaking toustaina 
por oak a pets ere IT: « 8 ® e ry ry ° 
mae cade by McADOO AND PRESIDENCY. 


© la eddition to the obove subscription reten,  - 
ohszribers wit! be billed for sdditional post- 
where required, In complisace with lew 
Soressing eecond-cleas retss outside of the 
Byes aad escond roses. 
sa 
Member of the Associated Prove 
The Associated Prast te exclusively entitled $ t 
f the wes for repvohcoucn of ol news dis- | x 
| eee credited to ft of not otherwise credued 
thts papes aad elyo the local aews publishes 
rein. 


the statement of William U McAdoo 
# placing of hrs name before the 


The design of this paper is te diffuse 
@mong ths people correct information on | 
Of tntorcdting eudjects, te imewlcete jusl | 


principics t= religion, morals, end pol. ; F 
tices and te cultivate « taste for sound 
Mteraturc.—[Provpectus ef the Bventug 
Post, Ma 1, Movember 16, 1901- 
SSS 
A week packed with tremendous events 
@nds with the collapse and submission of 
Germany written on the sky. Even Mr. 
Roosevelt admits that the war will be 


‘ta ¢ 
THURSDAY. TM sure 10. 1930| rap 
This 
The Enquirers sa 
Platform for Cincianati. 
o_ t 
Construction, Withont Delay, be 


Adequate Freight aad P 
Terminah. “s m hate ae 


Building of Rapid Transit ass | 
Wie area of Boulevard Lighting 
2. 4 
Development of Park and Boule- 
verd Vlans. 
Lesscning of the Somnke Nulsaace, 


The Weight of the World. 
Rudvord hiplins 
goiadle arsombly, 


THURSDAY, JUNE 18, 1820. 


“Oar Country! In her intercoarse with 
foreign nations may she always be in the 
right, bat oar cocntry, right of wrong.” 
e Stephen Decafsr. 


THE TRIBUNE'S 
PLATFORM FOR CHICAGO 


i—Leasen the Qmoke Herron 
8—Create « Modera Traction System. 
$—Modernise the Water Department. 
4+—Build Wide Rods Inle the Country 
5—Dovelop 40 Reailrosd Torminels 
O—Push the Chicago Plen. 
ees mE ees 


\ THE TREATY PLANK. 
Al this writing Ube peace treaty plank is a causes 
ef dissension beFween the trong reservauonista, 


qmuE TO BE dei 
fe state- 
gathero it from Lee ted 


eve been Pe 


4.0000 


Some Newspapers Have “PLATFORMS” IN THEIR “FLAGs.” 


THE EDITORIAL 


the absence of any such balance justified by a good 
reason? , 

4. Are the paper’s policies being clearly defined 
from day to day? Some papers think it a good plan 
to print at the head of the editorial column a list of 
the principal objects for which the paper is striving. 
This plan seems of doubtful expediency because there 
is danger that it will seem to the reader as though the 
paper is supporting its projects because they are its 
projects—for the sake of winning rather than for the 
sake of the common good. Without any such ex- 
plicit declaration of principles the paper may yet have 
its policies clearly understood as well as the reasons 
for changes in policy which, it is to be hoped, the pa- 
per will be honest enough to make, as occasion is sure 
to demand. 

5. Is there a proper correlation with the paper’s 
own news columns and, possibly, also with the col- 
umns of contributed opinion? 

6. Is the discussion of an-important topic kept 
going from day to day when advisable, but not beyond 
the limit of interest? This lends to the page a quality 
of steadiness and consistency. Seldom is any edi- 
torial to be considered as an independent unit but as 
having relation to something that was printed before 
and to something that will be printed afterwards. 
Events are not isolated, but are arranged in series 
bound together by causal or other relations. Editorial 
opinions on events need to have, from day to day, a 
manifest continuity. 

7. Are there elements of humor, sentiment, beau- 


50. 


MATERIALS FOR EDITORIALS 


ty, ethical truth? Osman C. Hooper, of the Columbus 
(Ohio) Dispatch, relates how, before the human in- 
terest editorial became common, an Ohio editor was 
so unconventional, in one issue of his paper, as to pub- 
lish a description of a gorgeous sunset. 

“That editorial was printed in the Ohio Statesman, 
May, 11, 1853. It created-a sensation. It was a gem 
shining out of the mud and commonplace of politics. 
But the Ohio State Journal republished it with anno- 
tations intended to ridicule it. A Circleville editor 
wrote a parody of it, which he called ‘A Great Old’ 
Henset.’ Other papers took it up and a wave of de- 
risive laughter swept the state. It was a lead that too 
few editors could follow, and none of them had the 
vision of universal service; they were all writing 
about politics and politicians and they did not mean to 
be pulled out of the rut. Somebody dubbed Mr. Cox 
‘Sunset,’ and the sobriquet became so much of a fix- 
ture that, no doubt, a great many people to this day 
think that his initials, ‘S. S.’ stand for ‘Sunset.’ There 
is reason to be thankful that conditions like that do 
not now exist.” 

8. Is the tone of the page sufficiently virile? Is it 
optimistic? Is it wholly in good taste? 

These are some of the guiding principles in the 
choice of materials. When the editor has found 
where his materials are to be found, how to collect 
them, and how to choose judiciously, he has traveled a 
long way toward successful writing. 

The Scope of Editorials—It is interesting and 
enlightening, though not particularly helpful in a prac- 


57 


THE EDITORIAL 


tical way, to make an examination of editorial pages 
to discover the sources of the materials used. 

The superficial type contains nothing but what has 
been gleaned from the run of the news or the talk 
of the streets or clubs. Hardly anything in it is be- 
yond the abilities of a high school senior. It may be 
pointed and clever, but it is uniformly shallow. The 
editor is obviously opposed to deep-shaft mining. 

The deeper or more solid type is distinguished from 
the superficial by the fact that some of its materials 
are drawn from history and from literature, from pro- 
found reflection, rich experience, broad humanized 
philosophy. 

A similar survey as to the scope of the materials 
will reveal striking variations in the proportion of 
local subjects, state, regional, national, foreign, world, 
general. Such a survey made during a period in the 
fall of 1919, showed in several metropolitan papers 
the following average proportions: local, 8 per cent; 
state, 3; regional, 1; national, 75; foreign, 2; world, 
6; general, 5. In several rural papers for the same 
period the average percentages were: local, 20; state, 
Q; regional, 1; national, 45; foreign, 1; world, 15; 
general, 9. In both groups of papers were found ex- 
treme cases in which only one class of subjects was 
treated, the most anomalous case being that of a small 
weekly which carried three and one-half columns— 
nine editorials—all on national or foreign topics. 


CHAPTER V; 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


Every ad writer worthy of the name, knows that it 
is possible to write an accurate and complete descrip- 
tion of an article or commodity, satisfactory enough 
from the point of view of the thing itself, and yet 
almost futile so far as sales influence is concerned. 

The same facts about the article presented with the 
reader’s interest and need clearly in mind have the 
desired results. 

An advertisement of raincoats, for example, should 
not be written with the purpose of doing justice to the 
subject of raincoats, but with the idea of arousing in 
the mind of a clearly visualized reader, effective, mov- 
ing concepts of the value for him—service and satis- 
faction—in possessing a raincoat. 

The Editor Does Not Write for Himself.—Pos- 
sibly an artist may, properly enough, create without 
regard to the interests or tastes of the public. Ade- 
quate rendering of the theme, or expression of his in- 
most self, may be his sufficient motive; but a writer 
of advertising is not an artist in that sense; neither is 
the writer of editorials. Both must write with con- 
stant reference to their readers. Neither advertise< 
ments nor editorials have, ordinarily, an existence 


oe 


THE EDITORIAL 


longer than a day or two. Neither have any excuse 
for being if they are not read by people who are alive 
on the day of publication. Posterity does not figure 
in the problem. , 

It is safe to say that, generally speaking, adver- 
tising is more judiciously written than are editorials— 
less often written merely according to the tastes of 
the writer, or to fill space. 

The only excuse for an editorial on any given sub- 
ject is that there exist, in the opinion of the editor, 
possible readers with whom the editorial is calculated 
to be effective in the way desired and planned. 

Merely to do justice to the subject is not the main 
end in view. Literary workmanship is a subordinate 
aim—a means to the end, merely. Self-expression as 
an end in itself must be regarded as a luxury which 
the editor should deny himself. 

The effect to be produced in the mind of the typical 
reader furnishes the editorial writer’s controlling mo- 
tive. 

The Reader is the Editor’s Jury.—The editor who 
has not discovered his reader is in a position as absurd 
as that of an orator oblivious of his audience or a 
statesman indifferent to his constituents. John J. 
Flinn, an editor of the Christian Science Monitor, 
says of the editorial writer, “He is just as much on 
the platform as the lecturer while earnestly engaged 
upon his task, and just as intimately responsive to the 
pervading sentiment of his audience. It is not invad- 
ing the field cf psychology or trespassing upon the 
domain of metaphysics to say that the writer, whether 

60 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


poet, dramatist, novelist, or journalist, whose heart is 
in his work, whose thought is concentrated upon his 
art, is never for a moment separated from the mul- 
titude he is addressing.” And another writer, not an 
editor, says, “When I am working on a housekeeping 
article I keep the face of one of the best housekeep- 
ers I know constantly before me, and her clear gaze 
seems to put the ‘Is it practical? test to everything I 
say. My audience for anything on the religious order 
consists of a clever, wide-awake preacher. My farm- 
er brother keeps me from over much theorizing or 
sentimentalizing when I write of things truly rural.” 

Not to Be Subservient.—This does not mean, of 
course, that the editor must be subservient to his 
public. He seeks to know the mind and attitude of 
readers not in order to conform his opinions to theirs, 
but in order to understand how to achieve the greatest 
possible success in impressing his ideas upon them. 
To be sure there will not always be antagonism of 
ideas. The editor may often find it his sole function 
to utter thoughts that are in the minds of all his read- 
ers. This, however, is an instance of agreement, not 
subserviency. Or, as Arthur Brisbane puts it, with 
his usual concreteness: 


“Nobody wants to know what you think. People want 
to know what they think. If I see a baby crying and go 
to tell him what I think of it, that baby won’t listen to 
me, but if I can find the pin that’s sticking in him, I’m 
the man for that baby. If you can find the pin that’s 
sticking into the public, then you are the man for that 


61 


THEY EDITORIAL 


baby. If you are very nice about it, he may afterwards 
let you tell him a little of what you think.” 


The paper which is undertaking the campaign for 
a memorial to be erected by the citizens of the com- 
munity in honor of those who served in the war, must . 
use as much insight in estimating the obstacles and 
aids, prejudices and preferences of its readers, and 
must employ as much skill in maneuvering each step 
in the operation, as a skillful lawyer uses in planning 
the conduct of a difficult case and handling it before 
the jury. 

The editorial “why” furnishes not only the safest 
guide in writing editorials, but also a fundamental 
basis for analysis and classification. |The student, 
whether he be in college, or in the front office of a 
country weekly, or on the editorial staff of a metropoli- 
tan daily, will find that painstaking study of the details 
of editorials as they are, will have its greatest value in 
revealing what editorials are not, thereby making 
clearer the answers to his questions as to what edi- 
torials should be. 

There are five main purposes that govern the edi- 
torial writer in his approach to the minds of his read- 
ers. Consideration of these may be said to constitute 
the psychological aspect of the editorial. 

1. The Simplest Type.—lIt is the editor’s busi- 
ness to know things that his readers do not know. He . 
has superior means of access to information on events 
of the day and he should also have superior facilities 
for making requisition on accumulated information in 


62 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


works of reference. This is comparatively easy in 
the case of the metropolitan newspaper which allows 
a staff of competent editors to devote a share of their 
time to becoming specialists in different lines. 

In the case of the country editor it is not so easy. 
The demands on his time come from the print shop, 
from the casual visitor, from the necessities of book- 
keeping, of writing advertisements, of looking after 
subscriptions, and attending meetings of this or that 
town organization or committee. Under such unfav- 
orable conditions, it is the part of wisdom for the 
overworked editor to forego the editorial of informa- 
tion. There are other useful forms of editorial *which 
can be written at odd moments without much prepara- 
tion. 

The editorial of information is, therefore, not the 
easiest editorial to write, although it is the simplest 
in form. It bears some resemblance to the news story; 
but is distinguishable therefrom by the absence of 
limitation to matters of recent occurrence. Moreover, 
it presents summarized information which hardly has 
any appropriate place in the news columns, unless it 
might be in a “follow story” giving the setting for 
some incident of the day. 

If a strike breaks out, an editorial of information 
may summarize the incidents leading up to it—may 
even present a brief history of labor troubles in the 
locality, state or nation. If a total eclipse is soon to 
be observed, the editorial of information will acquaint 
the reader with scientific facts necessary to appreciate 
the event. The value of such service to the reader 


63 


THE EpIPORIAL 


should not be minimized, although little is required on 
his part except ability to apprehend. 

This market-basket type of editorial employs only 
the comparatively simple rhetorical forms of descrip- 
tion and narration. 

Since it contains little or no original opinion, the in- 
formative type of editorial writing appears not so of- 
ten by itself, constituting a complete editorial, as in 
the form of supporting paragraphs in editorials of 
more ambitious purposes. 

Here, for example, is an editorial from the New 
York Tribune containing very little besides news: 


THE. GREAT PLIGHE | 


The great flight has been made. 
What Hawker failed so melodramat- 
ically to do Alcock accomplished yes- 
terday without any melodrama. He an- 
nihilated space, for he covered his 
course from Newfoundland to Ireland 
in sixteen hours and twenty-seven min- 
utes—at the rate of 120 miles an hour. 

The Atlantic is now conquered. What 
next? Secretary Daniels is talking 
about conquering the Pacific. After 
that the record-making aviator will 
weep, like Alexander, that there are 
no more worlds to conquer. 


The following editorial from the Detroit News 
went back nine years to begin a summary of the con- 
troversies between the city of Detroit and its street 
railway company : 


NINETEEN YEARS OF LAW 
SUITS 


It was cold Jan. 5, 1910; it had been 
cold for a good many Januarys before 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


that in Detroit. But this particular day 
the common council passed an ordi- 
nance ordering the D. U. R. to heat 
its cars. It seems incredible that street 
cars should have been run heatless in 
the dead of winter until then. Well, 
they were run heatless in the dead of 
winter after that, too. The D. U. R. 
went right on running them heatless. 
The city resorted to arresting and fin- 
ing D. U. R. employees and then the 
D. U. R. took notice. Yes, it made a 
promise to heat the cars. Again the 
winter of 1912, two years after the car 
heating ordinance was passed, the D. 
U. R. was again in court because the 
cars weren't heated. 

Another year goes by; again it is the 
dead of winter, Jan. 13, 1913, and again 
the D. U. R. is in court and fined, be- 
cause of heatless cars. 


And so on for more than a column, bringing the 
whole matter down to. date. 

This editorial of information, interesting to educa- 
tors, almost wrote itself after the editor had found 
the right page in the right book of reference. It is 
from the New York Evening Post: 


The celebration in England of the 
jubilee of Girton College offers this 
country an opportunity to plume itself 
on its earlier undertaking of the higher 
education of women. Girton College, 
established in 1869 at Hitchin, was 
transferred in 1873 to Cambridge, where 
the university threw open its examina- 
tions to the students. F. D. Maurice 
had as early as 1848 founded a college 
for women in Harley Street, London. 
Many of the later famous women’s in- 
stitutions in England—Newnham, Som- 
erville, Lady Margaret, and Westfield— 


65 


THE EDITORIAL 


were founded as a result of impulses 
originating with Girton. But here in 
America we shall soon be celebrating 
the centenary, not the half-centenary, 
of collegiate education for women. 
Oberlin threw open its doors to women 
in 1833. The Georgia Female College 
was chartered in 1836, though its stand- 
ards at the time were not high. In 
the decade from 1850 to 1860 higher 
education for women began to root it- 
self all over the country, and in 1861 
Vassar was founded. Tennyson wrote 
of “sweet girl graduates in their golden 
hair” in 1847, but had he been think- 
ing of real college girls he would have 
had to go to America to find them. 


2. The Prevailing Type—Somewhat more com- 
plex than the editorial of information, is the one writ- 
ten to show the hidden meaning of things—the rea} 
significance of facts or events. This may be called 
the editorial of interpretation. It is the test-tube type 
in which things are analyzed for the public. 

The president makes an address, say, in which the 
casual reader might find nothing striking but which to 
the eye of the trained diplomat reveals important de- 
velopments in foreign policy. The editorial of inter- 
pretation points out the hidden significance of state- 
ments appearing on the surface little more than com- 
monplace. 

A bill is passed by Congress authorizing expendi- 
tures for naval construction. Taken as an isolated 
fact the action may have little meaning for the ordi- 
nary reader. Placed in perspective by an editorial of 
interpretation, it is seen to be the first step in a radical 

66 : 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


departure from a naval policy maintained throughout 
several decades. 

The death of an interesting man or woman, the ar- 
rival of an anniversary date in the life of such person, 
or the recognition of such a person’s merit, by elec- 
tion or appointment or otherwise, affords opportunity 
for an interpretive editorial of appreciation. 

The act of a public official which, being interpreted, 
is found to be bad for the people, calls for an editorial 
of an interrogatory or, possibly, of a censorious charac- 
ter. 

The editorial of criticism in the ‘field of literature, 
dramatics, or art, aims to interpret values in these 
creative forms. , 

In the realm of philosophy and ethics is ample op- 
portunity for editorials aiming at the interpretation of 
life, its meaning, its moral values. 

This second type of editorial is more worthy of 
attention than the first, because it requires more 
thought to produce, and if it is honestly and ably 
written, yields more value to the reader seeking in- 
telligent grasp of vital questions. It makes a greater 
demand upon the reader’s abilities since it appeals to 
his power of comprehension rather than merely his 
faculty of apprehending facts. He must pay as he 
enters; or, perhaps better, he receives his consignment 
tahoe 1), 

The rhetorical form employed in this type of edi- 
torial is exposition. —— 

As representing a common use of interpretation to 
point out the significance of an event and the reasons 


67 


THE EDITORIAL 


for a certain line of procedure, the following is quoted 
from the Springfield Republican: 


THE FINE FLIGHT TO PLY- 
MOUTH 


A jinx may now be defined as an ap- 
paratus for getting there ultimately. 
NC-4 has had bad luck enough to spoil 
several voyages, but has triumphed over 
all obstacles and makes its finish in fine 
style. This last leg, from Ferrol to 
Plymouth, was not strictly necessary; 
the naval aviators are not competing 
for a prize, and their demonstration 
that the Atlantic could be crossed was 
completed when one of the three naval 
planes starting arrived safely at the 
Azores. The real difficulty lay in hit- 
ting so small a mark after so long a 
flight; from the Azores to Portugal the 
distance was less, but it was of more 
consequence that the target was too 
broad to be easily missed. 

From Lisbon to England is a flight 
that in these days offers no special dif- 
ficulty, and by itself it would make no 
special sensation. It could perfectly 
well be made by easy stages overland, 
and a seaplane could, without going out 
of its way, break the voyage at Brest 
where France projects furthest west. 
The NC-4 indeed passed between the 
mainland and an island twenty-eight 
miles at sea, but having no occasion 
to stop kept on and crossed the four 
hundred_and seventy-five miles of the 
flight without interruption. This is the 
more satisfactory because the engine 
trouble which appeared on the unlucky 
broken flight along the Portuguese 
coast suggested that the motors had de- 
teriorated. To test their durability was 
no doubt one of the chief reasons for 
continuing the bes to Plymouth, and 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


the lessons learned will be of value. In 
England the crew of the Nancy boat will 
be assured of a reception of the most 
cordial sort. 


Approval and disapproval are interpretive. They 
point out values, or relations to accepted standards. 
The following from the Philadelphia Public Ledger 
is an example: 


SUNDAY IN THE PARK 


The attempt to put an end to Sunday 
games in the Park by means of an in- 
junction has failed, as it ought to have 
failed. For the action of the Park 
Commission in permitting recreations 
in the people’s pleasure ground created 
no situation that threatened or did ir- 
reparable injury to any one. In fact, 
it went no further than to extend to all 
classes of the community using the Park 
privileges that have been utilized by 
everybody, everywhere, as a matter of 
course. The plain remedy for the Sabba- 
tarians, if they felt aggrieved by what 
goes on in the Park and if they are 
convinced that the law is being violated, 
was to have arrested the alleged of- 
fenders. This is the view taken by the 
Court of Common Pleas, following 
many precedents, and it remains for 
those who are discontented with this de- 
cision either to appeal or to adopt some 
other course. Meanwhile public opinion 
will cordially indorse the action of 
Judges Staake and Monaghan in their 
enlightened view of a law that belongs 
to another age and which has been set 
aside repeatedly to meet the changing 
opinions and conditions of a progres- 
sive community. 

69 


THE EDITORIAL 


A half-column interpretive editorial in the Boston 
Evening Transcript commenting on the fate of Tur- 
key after the Great War, began thus: 


THE END IS NEAR 


Six centuries and a half measure the 
whole existence, thus far, of the Otto- 
man Turks as a race threatening the 
peace of the western world. Four hun- 
dred and forty-four horsemen, all told, 
rode into Asia Minor, and, by turning 
the scale in a battle between two much 
larger armies there, acquired a fight- 
ing prominence which developed into 
the conquest of Constantinople and the 
menace of all Europe. * * * But to-day 
his reign is over, not only in Europe, 
whence he will be driven utterly, but 

|in Palestine, in Mesopotamia, in Ar- 
menia. At last, after all these cen- 
turies, his foot is lifted from the necks 
of all Christians. * * * No armistice 
would have been granted the Turk un- 
less he had thus surrendered completely. 
He will quit the Dardanelles and the 
Bosphorus. * * * 


When the actors in New York went on a strike, the 
New York Times published an editorial interpreting 
the situation. Sentences selected from each of the sev- 
eral paragraphs show its character: 


CONFESS AND MAKE UP 


If it can be established that there are | 
faults on both sides in the warfare be- 
tween actors and managers, a long step 
will be taken toward theatrical peace— 
which, with such amiable and generous 
if temperamental people, must eventu- 
ally mean reconciliation. And as far as 


70 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


one can gather from the published state- 
ments, errors are pretty evenly divided. 
* * * * x 


If the actors had rested their case on 
the claims thus stated, they must even- 
tually have won. Their contention is 
directly in line with a great world move- 
ment. Unfortunately, they seem to have 
suffered, no less than the managers, 
from intemperate counsel and bad lead- 
ership. 

# * rs * * 

The chance that reason will prevail 
seems at this hectic hour, to be not 
bright. On both sides well-intended ad- 
vances toward an understanding have 
already been made and rebuffed. Old 
friendships are sundered; hitherto loyal 
clubmates have parted in _ bitterness. 
The actors have staged their strike with 
telling dramatic effect, and the mana- 
gers have played their role of unre- 
lenting parent with indomitable zeal. 
But all this is not necessarily fatal to 
eventual reconciliation. | 


At the end of a column length the editorial closed 
effectively thus: 


Both sides have already suffered grave 
and irreparable losses. The legal situ- 
ation presents features which are at 
present undetermined—indeterminable. 
If the worst comes, it will be bad in- 
deed. The public, too, has its rights. 
It was diverted for a time by the side- 
walk performances; but interest in that 
died soon. It has need of amusement 
and is learning to find it elsewhere. 
Verbum sap. 


An editorial interpreting life in one of its aspects 
began thus in the Public Ledger of Philadelphia: 


71 


THE EDITORIAL 
COMPANY MANNERS 


Some people have to make an obvi- 
ous effort to be polite and gracious 
—to some it “comes natural” to be kind. 
Folk of the first order have one man- 
ner for the lowly folk and another for 
the people of importance. The second 
sort of human being—a sort that is uni- 
versally beloved—has only to appear to 
make a friend. The genuineness of a 
benign sincerity is felt at once. 

But it is not always easy in rain or 
shine, through thick and thin, to smile 
and be gentle and keep one’s temper. 
This radiant sweetness, that wins all 
hearts immediately, is born of a good- 
ness that has patiently schooled itself, 
and has known the thorns as well as 
the petals of the Maytime roses. There 
was practice that created the amiable 
habit—even as to make an exquisite 
sound of singing or the violin, that 

® seems a purely spontaneous rapture, 
there had to be practice, and there were 
long, stiff sessions of technical exercises. 


From the same paper another editorial of similar 
purpose may be taken to illustrate how moralizing may 
be enlivened by concreteness in style of presentation: 


TAKING SUGGESTIONS 


The man who knows it all and will 
not stoop to listen or be guided is what 
is called in the plain and homely ver- 
nacular “a natural-born fool.” 

* * * * * 


There is none like to me! says the cub, in the pride 
of his earliest kill; 

But the jungle is large and the cub he is small; 
let him think and be still. 


* * * * * 


72 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


Great rulers throughout the ages have 
been accessible to the rank and file of 
the people—for only by living in close 
contact with the popular pulse that is 
the reflex of the heart-throb of human- 
ity does one remain wholly normal and 
human. 

It was so with the great mind and 
heart of Lincoln. No man was read- 
ier to give audience to the humblest and 
to use the wit of simple folk for what- 
ever there was in it. 

* * * * * 

It was not the giraffe who was rec- 
ommended for our profitable observa- 
tion and emulation—it was the ant. 

You might learn much, if you would 
consult them, from the gatekeeper at a 
railway crossing, from the woman who 
brings home the washing, from the er- 
rand boy at the corner drug store, from 
the motorman who sends a neat child 
to school, from the janitor, the boot- 
black and the porter. If you were not 
selfish and proud, with your chin in 
your chest—if you would look up and 
around you—you would be gathering 
hints from the whole creation; from the 
bird building its nest, who tugs faith- 
fully away at a bit of string, or feed- 
ing its young in patience and self-de- 
nial; from the dog lovingly obedient to 
its master, and the horse faithful unto 
death in the traces. * * * 


An editorial with a similar purpose but viewing life 
from a different angle appeared in the Kansas City 


Star: 
THE TRAGEDY OF BEING COMIC 


A reputation for humor is undesir- 
able not only because it is exceedingly 
diffcult to maintain, but because when 
once a person has established the be- 
lief that he is “funny,” there are few 


73 


THE EDITORIAL 


if any who will take him seriously, no 
matter how earnest he may try to be- 
come. 

Many a speaker, teacher or other per- 
son having to do with fairly large 
groups of people has found the temp- 
tation to entertain his listeners by tell- 
ing jokes or being comic in manner al- 
most irresistible. Some have yielded, 
and a very few have succeeded in main- 
taining a reputation for humor for 
many years. Others have found that 
after a short time the old stories would 
not make the crowds laugh, that the 
audiences actually grew weary of the 
efforts of the entertainer to be amus- 
ing and finally came to criticize him be- 
cause he was not more “substantial” 
in his thought and character. 

But the tragedy of not being able to 
throw off the character of the humor- 
ist or the clown and appear as a seri- 
ous minded person on a serious subject 
is extremely poignant. Mark Twain 
told of going to a large American uni- 
versity once and appearing before the 
students in chapel with a very earnest 
desire to talk to them on a serious sub- 
ject. His manner indicated his purpose, 
but as he stepped to the front of the 
platform he was greeted with roars of 
laughter. Twain declared he could 
hardly suppress his tears because he 
realized completely that he could never 
be taken seriously. 

* * * * * 

But the tragedy of being comic has 
another phase. It is often necessary 
for the humorist or comedian to be 
amusing when he does not feel at all 
like it. 

* * * * * 

It would be interesting for those who 
laugh at the apparently wholehearted 
antics of the clown, the seemingly spon- 
taneous humor of the writer or speaker, 


74 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


to recall that sorrow may be at work 
behind the mask and that the person 
whose business it is to lighten the bur- 
den of the world for others may him- 
self be loaded with care and beholding 
life as a dismal spectacle. 


Reflections on the meaning of contradictions con- 
stitute a somewhat philosophical editorial of interpre- 
tation from the Cleveland Press: 


Every one has observed how fre- 
quently one maxim seems to contradict 
another. In this fashion: 


Look before you leap. 
He who hesitates is lost. 


Two heads are better than one. 
Too many cooks spoil the broth. 


Out of sight, out of mind. 
Absence makes the heart grow fonder. 


It is never too late to mend. ane 
As the twig is bent, the tree is in- 
clined. 


Does that mean that each maxim is 
false? Not at all. Each in its own 
time and place may be right. The whole 
truth is not so simple that it can be 
condensed into a single thought. 

A dog may be truly a companionable 
fellow to his master, truly a nuisance 
to the master’s wife, and truly a ter- 
ror to the neighbor’s cat. 

Each person is a complicated mixture 
of frequent conflicting traits and ten- 
dencies. That’s true of the obscure. 
It is equally true of those who are con- 
spicuous. Two voters may have ex- 
actly opposite views of a political can- 
didate and each view may be right. 


ihe 


THE EDITORIAL 


Appreciation of significant lives, constituting a 
form of the interpretive editorial, may be illustrated 
by the following opening paragraph from an editorial 
in the Boston Evening Transcript: 


MRS. RUSSELL SAGE 


If Mrs. Hetty Green died the most 
remarkable maker of money _ ever 
known among American women, Mrs. 
Russell Sage went to her rest this morn- 
ing the most remarkable giver. Nor 
did the contrast between the two end 
with this single difference, but rather 
was borne out as between nearly all the 
aspects of their two characters. Upon 
only one basis did they reach union, 
and that was in the sagacity of their 
minds, in the simplicity of their per- 
sonal lives, and in their strength of 
character, as undeniable in the case of 
Mrs. Green as in that of Mrs. Sage. 


On the other hand may be found occasionally an 
editorial of bitter disapproval such as this from the 
Evening Post of New York: 


The death of “Gas” Addicks recalls 
a time which already seems ancient. His 
brazen attempt to buy one of Dela- 
ware’s seats in the Senate held the at- 
tention of the country like a drama. 
For some years the State had only one 
Senator at Washington, choosing to for- 
feit half of her representation rather 
than to submit to having for one of her 
spokesmen an unprincipled upstart. She 
held to this course in the face of criti- 
cism in high places, including a hint 
from the White House that she was 
unreasonably virtuous. Unconsciously, 


76 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


Addicks was encouraging the agitation 
for direct election of Senators. The 
example of the Legislature of Dela- 
ware unable either to elect a Senator 
or to transact any other business, ex- 
cept under great difficulties, owing to 
the ambition of a millionaire, became 
one of the stock illustrations of the 
breaking down of the old system. 
While Addicks could not elect a ma- 
jority of the Legislature, he could elect 
enough members to prevent any one 
else from obtaining.a majority. In the 
end he gave up the hopeless fight and 
left the State of which he had been a 
legal rather than an actual resident, 
and that only for the purpose of cor- 
rupting it. 


A type of interpretive editorial which goes into 
scrap books and which is revived and reprinted year 
after year, is that revealing the beauty in some aspect 
of nature. The following by W. E. Blackburn, in the 
Anthony (Kansas) Republican may be chosen as an 


example: 
OCTOBER IN KANSAS 


The very air is invigorant; fragrant 
from the harvest, spiced with wood 
smoke, bracing from the first frosts, 
scintillant with the glorious sunshine 
that fills the shortening autumn days 
with splendor and makes thin and lumi- 
nous the attending shadow. “Bob 
White” shrills of ‘more wet, more 
wet”; his Quakerish little wife, with 
half-grown brood, trimly speeds across 
the roadway into the ripened corn, or 
with musical “whir-r-r-r” rises, to dive 
into the distant sea of undulating brown. 
Prairie larks trill and carol, on the rusty 
wire, or perched on the infrequent posts 
that hold the cattle from the ripened 


77 


THE EDITORIAL 


field. Hawks fly low; frightened spar- 
rows flutter into trees and hedge row; 
rabbits scurry from bare pastures to 
grassy covert, or sit erect and watch 
with distended eye, quivering nostril, 
and rigid ear the impending danger. 
The murmur of voices, the morning 
cock crow, the lowing of cattle are as 
distant music, carried softly to the ear 
by the voluptuous air. Corn shocks dot 
the field—tents of an army that stands 
nearby in whispering ranks. A multi- 
tude of peace and plenty; no arms; no 
equipment, but a haversack of golden 
grain on hip or shoulder. Save a weary 
few, they stand expectant, waiting to 
deliver their garnered wealth, be, mus- 
tered out and with empty pockets, light 
hearts and fluttering banners retrace 
their steps via the moldering way to 
the place whence they came, and rest. 
In rusty velvet fields, big, dusky hay- 
stacks stand in herds or gather in about 
the barn, shouldering one another in 
ponderous good humor. 

From the inspiration of the caressing 
air, the peaceful plenteous view, satis- 
fied achievement of a summer’s work, 
of goodly store from Nature’s plenty, 
we look with brightened eye, bounding 
blood and defiant head, to the north, 
undaunted by the icy breath that tells 
of coming snow. 


Interpretation forms the larger part of the matter 
in most editorial columns. 
find an editorial page containing almost nothing but 


exposition. 


3. The Kind Euclid Invented.—The purpose of 
the third type of editorial is to convince the reader 
by means of argument—it is the “reason why’ type. 
Editorials of information and interpretation serve in- 


78 


It is not uncommon to 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


cidentally to establish opinions or convictions in the 
reader’s mind, but the third type of editorial aims at 
winning the reader’s agreement or belief by the direct 
argumentative method. This editorial has the ad- 
vantage of being “open and above board,’ and when 
well written, gives a clear-cut statement of the object 
aimed at and a forceful presentation of the reasons 
therefor. Its most obvious disadvantage is that human 
nature does not readily permit itself to be convinced 
by argument—at least by argument alone. 

Rarely does one find an editorial argumentative 
throughout, but this element in editorial writing 1s 
second in importance only to exposition. 

In the following editorial from the New York 
American, the skeleton of the argument is more plain- 
ly exposed than is usual. Direct arguments; then 
arguments in refutation; then more direct arguments, 
is the general plan of organization. 


REASONS WHY THE PRESIDENT 
SHOULD SAVE DAYLIGHT 
SAVING 


President Wilson should return to 
Congress with his disapproval the Agri- 
cultural appropriation bill upon which 
the repeal of daylight saving was im- 
posed as a rider. He should do this 
for two reasons. 

One is the need of checking the habit 
among legislators of using appropria- 
tion bills as vehicles to carry legisla- 
tion which could not withstand direct 
scrutiny if submitted alone. 

The tendency to resort to this evasive 
method to advance tricky or question- 


79 


THE EDITORIAL 


able legislation is growing. It is vicious | 
and needs to be halted. 

But the more important reason why 
a veto is required is because the repeal 
of the daylight saving experiment is not 
the wish of the American people and 
is not in their best interest. | 

Clearly the timing of the clock so 
that as much time as possible is pro- 
vided for indoor workers to get out of 
doors during pleasant weather—in home 
gardens, at ball games, playing in any 
wholesome fashion in the open air—is 
to the advantage of workers. 

No man can with a sober face dis- 
pute a truth so plainly self-evident. 

And since it is to the advantage of 
workers, which means in the United 
States a majority of all citizens, it con- 
sequently is to the advantage of so- 
ciety. 

The records show that daylight sav- 
ing reduced accidents in ships and on 
public highways; lessened eye strain 
among those compelled to work by ar- 
tificial light; gave a great impetus to 
amateur gardening, with its reduction 
in the cost of living and its happy divi- 
dend of better health; and proved a 
source of substantial benefit to all 
dwellers in cities and villages. 

Secretary Frank Morrison, of the 
American Federation of Labor, is au- 
thority for the statement that in 1918, 
in Pennsylvania alone, there were 43,036 
fewer industrial accidents than in 1917, 
and 70,772 fewer than in 1916. He 
attributes to daylight saving much of 
this greater safety in employment. 

So when the American Federation of 
Labor by a close vote defeats an en- 
dorsement of daylight saving and in- 
stead adopts a resolution urging its re- 
peal, we infer that the vote is not 
reflective of the will of the workers gen- 


80 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


erally, but is instead reflective of con- 
vention politics. 

We place little more confidence in the 
petition from the farmers urging repeal 
with which the Congress was deluged. 

It takes one of two things to collect 
the signatures of thousands of farmers 
to a petition—either a substantial griev- 
ance grown acute or a set-up. 

We have searched among farmers for 
signs of the existence of a substantial 
grievance against daylight saving and 
we have not found it. 

In short, the positively proved bene- 
fits of daylight saving so far offset the 
fanciful objections that the public wel- 
ae demands a veto of the proposed re- 
peal. 

There is no substance in the move- 
ment for repeal. 

It would not look different if it had 
been deliberately set up by gas, electric 
and coal trusts or by politicians hunt- 
ing pretexts. 

Consider the lighting angle for a mo- 
ment. Ten million families saving an 
hour’s light a night for 150 nights 
means 1,500,000,000 hours of light that 
the lighting companies of the country 
do not collect for. If it cost only one 
cent an hour, that would mean $15,- 
000,000 that the public now saves and 
which the lighting companies would get 
back if the repeal goes through. 

The yearly saving in coal by day- 
light saving is reckoned at 1,500,000 
tons. The coal trust could well afford 
to join the gas trust and the electric 
trust in organizing a fight for the old 
schedule. 

These estimates of savings are sus- 
tained by foreign experience. In five 
months England saved $12,000,000 in 
gas and electricity. France in a year 
saved $10,000,000. One summer’s sav- 
ing in New York City has been reckoned 


SI 


THE EDITORIAL 


at $1,500,000. Conservative figuring 
puts the total American direct cash 
saving at $40,000,000 a year, exclusive 
of the enhanced value in health from 
greater outdoor activities, and the value 
of garden produce made possible by 
extra daylight. The produce from war 
gardens in 1918 was valued at $525,- 
000,000, Perhaps a third of this re- 
ve from the extra hour of evening 
toil. 

Congress has been stampeded in this 
matter and it is up to the President to 
recall it to reason. 


This editorial from the New York World represents 
the more familiar argumentative type in which no 
syllogism is fully stated, but only the major or minor 
premise or the conclusion explicitly given, while the 
logical progress of the argument’ is suggested rather 
than diagrammed: 


MANSLAUGHTER AS A SPORT 


With one man killed instantly under 
his overturned machine and with two 
men dying under the tortures of gaso- 
line flames on the speedway at Indian- 
apolis on Saturday, a day’s new record 
was made in the frightfulness of motor- 
car racing. For good measure in dis- 
aster, a fourth man was taken from the 
track with a fractured skull. For once, 
that large portion of an automobile- 
racing crowd which is drawn out by the 
ever-present menace of death among fly- 
ing wheels had presented to its strain- 
ing eyes the sights it had reason fear- 
fully to expect. 

Racing in power-driven cars has never 
been justified by’ its results, even when 
free from serious accident. It has 
brought out no points in engine con- 


82 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


struction and mechanical invention tnat: 
could not have been revealed in safe 
and ordinary tests. It has ministered 
not to progress in motor building and 
development, but to men’s morbid love 
of being thrilled by the daring and peril 
of other men. There is no triumph of 
breeding, of natural prowess or of train- 
ing in the fact that one factory-made 
piece of locomotive machinery can be 
driven faster than another. Even the 
courage for which drivers in a tearing 
competition must receive credit is of 
the quality rather <£ = spurring reck- 
lessness than of a steady, uplifting im- 
pulse. 

Since motor racing began, The World 
has denied consistently its place among 
useful or really inspiring sports; has 
commented on the lack of value of its 
results as compared with its deadly 
risks. On any speedway, on any trial 
in speedmadness, the casualty potential- 
ity looms large. “ine indianapolis out- 
come may at any time be outrivaled. 
How much longer will it be permitted, 
under- the abused name of sport, to 
multiply invitations to manslaughter? 


As contributing editor for the Kansas City Star, 
Theodore Roosevelt wrote usually in argumentative 
vein and, in his political editorials, in a style that was 
spirited or even caustic. A typical editorial on a non- 
political subject is the following: 


THE BONDHOLDERS AND THE 
PEOPLE 


By THEODORE ROOSEVELT . 


Not many years ago one of the fa- 
vorite cries of those who wished to ex- 
ploit for their own advantage the often 


83 


THE EDITORIAL 


justifiable popular unrest and discon- 
tent was that “the people were op- 
pressed in the interest of the bondhold- 
ers.’ The more ardent souls of this 
type wished to repudiate the national 
debt to “wipe it out as with a sponge” 
in order to remove the “oppression.” 
The bondholders were always held up 
as greedy creatures who had obtained 
an unfair advantage of the people as 
a whole. 

Well, the Liberty Loan now offers the 
chance to make the people and the bond- 
holders interchangeable terms. The 
bonds are issued in such a way that 
the farmer and the wage worker have 
exactly the same chance as the banker 
to purchase and hold as many as or 
as few as they wish. No matter how 
small a man’s means he can get some 
part of a bond if he wishes. The gov- 
ernment and the big financiers are do- 
ing all they can to make the sale as 
widely distributed as possible. Some 
bankers are serving without pay in the 
effort to put all the facts before the 
people as a whole, and so make the 
loan in very truth a people’s loan. It 
rests with the people themselves to de- 
cide whether it shall be such. 

The government must have the 
money. It is a patriotic duty to pur- 
chase the bonds. And they offer an 
absolutely safe investment. The money 
invested is invested on the best security 
in the world—that of the United States; 
of the American Nation itself. The 
money cannot be lost unless the United 
States is destroyed, and in that case we 
would all of us be smashed anyhow, 
so that it would not make any differ- 
ence. The people can, if they choose, 
now make themselves the bondholders. 
If they do not so choose and if they 
force Wall Street to become the largest 
purchaser of the bonds, which must be 


84 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


bought somehow, then they will have 
no right in the future to grumble about 
the bondholders as a special class. We 
et HON, all of us, join that class if we 
wish. | 


4. The “Highest” Type.—The fourth editorial! 
purpose is to influence action. There is a temptation 
to speak of this as the highest type of editorial, since 
apprehension of facts, understanding of their signifi- 
cance, and belief in the proposition laid down, are 
often of little value to the individual or society un- 
less they result in action. But it is difficult to arrive 
at values in this realm. It seems clear, however, that 
the editor who, through appeal to the feelings and 
the will of his readers, produces results in action, is 
performing a more significant social function than the 
one who merely imparts information or builds opinion. 

The form of writing employed for the “evange- 
listic’ editorial is persuasion. It involves such emo- 
tional appeals, and appeals to the instincts, as seem 
likely to be effective, running all the way from subtle 
suggestion to frank exhortation. If the appeal is based 
on moral grounds it is nevertheless framed so as to 
transcend, if necessary, the moral limitations of that 
convenient composite, the average reader. 

The superior effectiveness of diplomacy was thus 
analyzed by Abraham Lincoln: “When the conduct 
of men is designed to be influenced, persuasion, kind, 
unassuming persuasion, should ever be adopted. It is 
an old and true maxim that ‘a drop of honey catches 
more flies than a gallon of gall.” So with men. If you 
would win a man to your cause, first convince him 


85 


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that you are his sincere friend. Therein is a drop of 
honey that catches his heart, which, say what he will, 
when once gained, you will find but little trouble in 
convincing his judgment of the justice of your cause, 
if indeed that cause really be a just one. On the con- 
trary, assume to dictate to his judgment, or to com- 
mand his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned 
and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close 
all the avenues to his head and heart; and though you 
throw with more than Herculean force and precision, 
you will be no more able to pierce him than to pene- 
trate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw. 
Such is man, and so must he be understood by those 
who would lead him, even in his own best interests.” 

With persuasive writing and persuasive pictures, 
the successful maker of advertisements has much to 
do. An editorial writer might do much worse with 
some of his time than to devote it to seeking out the 
methods by which the advertiser enlists in his service 
fear, worry, ambition, love, sympathy, altruism, pride, 
envy, jealousy; the instincts of self-adornment, emu- 
lation, hunting, constructiveness, thrift, exercise of 
mental powers; and an endless list of other effective 
concepts. Blessed is the writer who despises not 
psychology. 

Almost never does one find a long editorial of this 
type. Even a short editorial of persuasion is useless 
unless the reader already understands the matter under 
consideration, and is in agreement with the editor’s 
view. Persuasion must rest on information, under- 
standing, and belief. In practice, the persuasive ele- 


87 


THE EDITORIAL 


ment is interwoven with exposition and argument 
which prepare the reader for an active response. 

In the editorial page of what might be called the 
“intellectual” type, persuasion is a small factor; but 
it forms the most characteristic trait of what is fre- . 
quently called the dynamic newspaper. 

David Gibson, founder of the Gibson magazines, in 
discussing persuasive editorial writing, advances the 
following theory of effectiveness: 


Never undertake to bring any change of thought or 
induce any action by appeal to feelings, sympathy or 
morals for the sake of morals. 

Make an appeal to self-interest. 

Present the argument that a changed thought or action 
will make more profit, bring about a better state of health, 
increase length of life, or bring more pleasure and enjoy- 
ment. 

It is more important that we should think than feel. 

If we think right on all matters we will feel right. 

For instance, in an argument against poverty and 
slums: do not picture the conditions of the people of that 
state, or give any figures as to the number of arrests or 
deaths. 

Go at it from the other way around: Take it up from 
its business side, that poverty and slums are unprofitable, 
that they are not only a menace to the health and life of 
better parts of a community, but poor people have no 
money to buy anything, that if their living surroundings 
wefe better they would do more and better work, have 
more, buy more and add to the prosperity of the com- 
munity generally by a higher standard of living and its 
accruing purchasing power. 


88 


POUPORTAT PURROSHS 


Or, say, in making an argument against short weight 
in stores: 

Do not picture the thinly clad, work-worn woman with 
thirteen underfed, fatherless children and the visible 
hand of short weight reaching into her market basket 
and taking the food that would otherwise go into the 
mouths of her hungry children. 

Go at this from another angle—make a flank attack on 
the offender direct without pointing to the merchants of 
any particular class or locality. 

Point out that short weights do not pay either a large 
or small business, that while all customers do not weigh 
the goods they receive, yet one who does will spread the 
fact of offense to other customers in the neighborhood, 
bringing untold ill-will and loss of trade to a merchant. 

People act best, more quickly and permanently in self- 
interest. 

They soon forget the others’ interest unless they see 
clearly that their own interest is involved. 

People have a way of coming to shortly after an emo- 
tional treatment. 


There is much sound doctrine here, though the de- 
precation of direct appeals to the feelings is not con- 
vincing since the days of the war drives. Moreover, 
self-interest is powerful largely because its roots lie 
in the deepest human instincts. 

When Sympathy Is Quickened.—An editor learns 
that a fashionable gun club is using live pigeons for 
targets, and that scores of wounded birds crawl away 
into the grass or hedges to die. Evidently this is a 
subject for editorial handling that requires no argu- 
ment and no exposition, but only a few sentences of 


89 


THE EDITORIAL 


description followed by persuasion towards such 
action as the editor thinks desirable. This will be true 
of most editorials with humanitarian motives. 

Likewise an editorial of almost pure persuasion may 
be written around questions of public safety, such, for 
example, as a liberty loan; but the element of in- 
formation, interpretation, and argument is likely to 
be large. 

When persuasion is used in an editorial, it is almost 
always in an editorial dealing with some local matter, 
because it is only in such matters that a newspaper is 
likely to attempt results directly through action by its 
readers. Appeals for support of charitable enterprises 
or for subscriptions towards a public improvement are 
familiar enough. The following from the Kansas 
City Star is a conservative example of this type: 


IMPROVE SWOPE PARK! 


The bond issue for Swope Park con- 
templated by the Park Board ought to 
be considered, not as an expense, but 
as a necessary investment. Kansas City 
must supply artificially the outdoor rec- 
reation facilities that are furnished by 
nature to cities near large bodies of 
water or near the mountains. Other- 
wise it will be under a handicap in 
competing with these cities. 

The big amusement need for Kansas 
City is the opportunity for water sports 
—for bathing and boating. This need 
has been met in a trifling way by the 
public baths and the Swope Park La- 
goon. But there is need for a large 
and accessible lake in the park, and 
for the improvement of the Blue from 
the park to its mouth. 


go 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


Any one who has seen the -normous 
crowds that patronize the bathing 
beaches about Boston, New York, Cleve- 
land, Chicago, will appreciate the un- 
realized possibilities in Kansas City. 
Why, with adequate facilities for water 
sports, people would forget that it ever 
is hot in Kansas City, and would look 
on it as a privilege to spend the sum- 
mer here. 

But this result can never be brought 
about without a bond issue. Kansas 
City is amply able to afford the invest- 
ment. It would pay big returns in com- 
fort and happiness and contentment. It 

| ought to be made big enough to cover 
the improvements necessary for several 
years ahead. 

Let’s get the enjoyment out of Swope 
Park and the Blue now, in the im- 
mediate present. Posterity can take 
care of itself. Let’s look after the 
present generation! 


Persuasion in an editorial comes naturally towards 
the close, but is equally effective at the beginning if no 
need exists for preparing the reader to receive it hos- 
pitably. In the first and last paragraphs of this edi- 
torial from the New York World, persuasion is about 
equally strong: 


GREEN MOTORMAN’S DAY PAST 


One result of the accident on the 
Brooklyn Rapid Transit Friday evening 
should be the passage by the Board of 
Aldermen of an ordinance to make it 
mandatory on traction companies in this 
city to place only experienced motor- 
men in charge of subway and elevated 
trains. * * * 

Let us not only make laws to give 
the fullest protection to the traveling 


OI 


THE EDITORIAL 


public, but let us see that they are en- 
forced. And when officials show such 

‘ an utter disregard of human life as they 
did last Friday in Brooklyn let us be 
in a position to do something about it 
that will count, except talk. 


The spirited tone of this editorial from the Philadel- 
phia Public Ledger is persuasive, though the concrete 
suggestion is left for the last sentence: 


THE GROTESQUE BOTTLE 
WASTAGE 


For years the streets of the residence 
sections of the city have been strewn 
with broken bottles, and neither the 
milk companies nor the police nor any 
of the various organizations that are 
supposedly at work teaching home 
economies and high civic ideals have 
put a check on the wastage, which is 
beyond all reason. That the wastage 
is the greater in the poorer parts of 
the city any one familiar with the life 
in small streets well knows. And that 
the continuing destruction of what is 
not a cheap product, but, in a_ sense, 
is a luxurious adjunct to modern meth- 
ods of milk delivery, goes on is only 
another example of that extreme ex- 
travagance that makes the cost of cer- 
tain food supplies steadily rise even 
where other factors do not come into 
play. When it is also noted that many 
of those who do nothing to prevent the 
breaking of these bottles by the chil- 
dren are in many cases recent arrivals, 
who if they were served with milk in 
glass bottles in their native villages in 
the East of Europe would think that 
the age of miracles was at hand, sim- 
ply adds another element in incredibly 
blind carelessness to the waste that calls 


Q2 


PDT ORIAL PURPOSES 


for a radical remedy. For the destruc- 
tion of the bottles is not only an ele- 
ment in the cost of milk, but it adds 
materially to the menace to life and 
limb and to the dangers to motor-cars 
that the glass-littered streets afford and 
is absolutely uneconomic and without 
excuse. So why should not the auto- 
mobile folk, the Civic Club, the police, 
the Street Cleaning Department and 
above all the milk dealers combine to 
stop so stupid a practice? A few ar- 
rests of bottle breakers and of house- 
holders whose sidewalks and _ pave- 
ela are a layer of broken glass 
would bring the wasters to their senses. 


5. The General Type.—We have now separated, 
for the purpose of analysis, editorials having to do 
with apprehension, comprehension, belief, and voli- 
tion on the part of the reader. The fifth editorial type 
has for its purpose to entertain. To be sure any type 
of the editorial must be entertaining, that is, it must 
be interesting; but this last forsakes almost entirely 
the serious tone of the preceding four types. It is 
written to please the reader’s taste for wit and humor. 
It is nothing more than an essay with cleverness for 
its predominant characteristic. It is essentially a form 
of the interpretive or expositional editorial, with a 
characteristic purpose entitling it to separate consid- 
eration. More than any other type, it depends for its 
success on style in writing. 

Editorials written solely for the purpose of enter- 
taining the reader are found not infrequently in al- 
most all newspapers, but the entertainment element is 
also frequently found supplementing more serious 


93 


THE EDITORIAL - 


editorial matter, for example, it is useful as a mode of 
enlivening statistical information otherwise dry. 

The motive for the editorial of entertainment is 
almost purely literary, and the opinion is sometimes 
expressed that such essays do not belong in the edi- 
torial column. It must be remembered, however, that 
there is no written nor unwritten law as to what be- 
longs in editorial columns. Only editors are the judges 
of this matter and while the editorial of entertainment 
is nowhere used so extensively as formerly in the 
columns of the New York Sun, it is still a well estab- 
lished type and its disappearance would impoverish 
editorial pages. 

Representing the “old” Sum, the following open- 
ings are selected from two editorials typical of the 
collection of two hundred or more appearing in book 
form as “Casual Essays of the Sun’: 


COLLEGE YELLS 


The Topeka Capital insists that 
“Eastern colleges are conventional, 
monotonous, and solemn, as becomes 
that staid and somnolent section,” and 
it lauds “the variety and ginger” of the 
Western college yells. It gives the place 
of honor among these to the “yell” of 
‘the University of Kansas: 


“Rock CHALK! 
JAYHAWK! 
pe Ce ht 


Our Grasshopper contemporary re- 
gards this as “a model historically, geo- 
logically, and euphoniously.” Well, it 
is a short and explosive cry, and may 


94 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


be supposed to answer the great and 
wise purposes of a college “yell,” to 
set off the superiority of the lungs of 
the yellers and to strike terror and 
amazement into the ears of the hear- 
ers. As Indians become rarer, the un- 
dergraduate warwhoop grows more in- 
teresting as a sort gf survival; and 
properly trained parents will take their 
children to hear it. They are queer bits 
of patter and howl, many of the col- 
lege “yells,’ and a visitor from Corea, 
for instance, would probably wonder 
among what wild tribes he had fallen 
if he went to a football game. “Sav- 
ages fighting on the ground; and men 
yelling unintelligently from the bench- 
es,’ might be his mistaken description. 


CURIOSITIES OF AMERICAN 
SPEECH 


Is a pancake fried or baked, or sim- 
ply cooked? Is it after all really a 
pancake and not rather a griddle cake, 
a flannel cake, a buckwheat or a flap- 
jack? What is a doughnut? When 
you tear your trousers on a sharp point 
is the first word you instinctively apply 
to the rectangular rent, trappatch, barn- 
door, or weekwary, as says the New 
Englander, or is it winklehawk or 
nicklehawk, as New Yorkers’ say? 
What do you mean by dingbats? How 
widespread is the use of the shinny? 


An idea of the variety in the Sun’s menu may be 
formed by reading the chapter headings under which 
the essays are grouped: 


Tue Goop OLp TIMES. 

INFLUENCE OF PIE AND OTHER Eat- 
ABLES ON CIVILIZATION. 

FAmous MEN AND INSTITUTIONS. 


95 


THE EDITORIAL 


Oxtp AcE, YouTH AND CHILDHOOD. 

PoEets, OLD AND NEw, IN VERSE AND 
PROSE. 

Lovers, SWEETHEARTS AND OTHERS. 

Mere Man, His WIFE Anp His 
MoTHER-IN-LAw. 

QUESTIONS OF PROPRIETY AND SUCCESS 
IN LIFE. 

THe Cup THAT CHEERS. 

DIscouRSES ON NATURAL HISsSToRY. 

NAMES. 


Fashions furnish subjects attractive to editors, as 
witness this from the New York Tribune: 


BLUE GODDESSES 


Like the bluebirds of autumn, first 
one alone, then a pair, then flocks, the 
new frocks have fluttered forth upon 
Fifth Avenue. Did the dressmakers of 
Paris feel that a uniform must some- 
how be achieved for women? Or did 
they simply become weary of styles, as 
they so long had been, and resolve that 
something, anything, must be done? 
We can leave it to the interpreters of 
fashion to debate; the thing is here. 

The unobservant masculine eye might 
be puzzled by these new apparitions— 
so absolutely like all that has gone be- 
fore, so absolutely different. The dark 
blue flapper frock is no new thought 
in itself. But these casements, long and 
sheath-like of skirt and very high and 
chaste of collar—it surely took true 
imagination and ingenuity to make in 
the name of war economy a style so 
peculiar and inevitable and expensive. 

Somber has been one criticism of 
these dark blue draperies. But this all 
depends on whether you view the frock 
as a thing alone or as a companion 
piece for an olive drab uniform deco- 


96 


EDI PORTAL: PURPOSES 


rated with shoulder bars and _ service 
stripes. There is the secret of the blue 
goddess’s success. She is not meant to 
fly alone. She is but a background, si- 
lent, reserved, dignified, but oh, so neat, 
so attentive, so proud, so. extrava- 
gantly economical! What hero could 
wish for more! 


This general type of editorial is not, of course, al- 
ways humorous throughout. Here is one with a touch 
of pathos, written by William Allen White of the 
Emporia Gazette: 


Bill Colyar brought us in our an- 
nual pawpaw to-day, and we have 
tucked it away where it will do us the 
most good. We know not how it may 
affect others, but we have managed one 
way or another to eat at least a paw- 
paw a year for the past fifty years. 
And we have noticed this: Every year 
that we have eaten a pawpaw we have 
lived until the following summer. It 
may not work that way with every 
one; but certainly the pawpaws have 
kept us alive from year to year. It is 
a great fruit, the pawpaw; a kind of 
atavistic throw-back to a custard pie 
on its mother’s side and a bullhead cat- 
fish on its father’s side, carrying the 
aroma and consistency of the one and 
the bones and sins of the father. 

But it is the saddest fruit in the 
world, too. It recalls woods and fields 
that are streets now, times that are 
gone now, days that are memories, and 
boys who are dead! 


May Use One or All.—Briefly to illustrate the 
five types of editorial writing, from the point of view 
of a single subject, suppose that an editor contem- 


D7 


THE EDITORIAL 


plated handling the matter of milk inspection. He 
might write a very informative editorial, giving the 
scientific facts about milk contamination and inspec- 
tion. Such an editorial might be useful as one step in 
a campaign for sanitation. Or he might write an 
editorial of interpretation which would set forth the 
probable effects of the proposed program on the health 
of the community, the price of milk, the dairying in- 
dustry, and the state-wide movement for better ‘living 
conditions. Or he might write an argumentative edi- 
torial devoted entirely to proving by facts and figures 
that inspection would be a good thing for the dairy- 
men as well as for the children. Or he might write 
a persuasive editorial calculated to point the way to 
action on the part of his readers which would result 
in enforcement of the ordinance covering milk in- 
spection. Or he might write a humorous editorial 
exaggerating, more or less, the dramatic episodes in 
the life of the milk inspector or perhaps a pseudo- 
regretful contrast between the genuine natural milk 
that father used to let us drink out of the pail, with 
a few honest hairs in it, and the modern dairy product, 
with the correct number of microbes and carefully 
counted atoms of butter fat, but no romance. 

It might be that, in practice, no editor would be 
likely to write according to a single type alone,—un- 
less it might be the fifth type,—but the fact remains 
that such analysis as we have attempted helps to 
acquaint the writer with the possibilities of his craft. 
The important thing is that before he goes to work he 
shall have a clearly defined purpose, though his pur- 

98 


EDITORIAL PURPOSES 


pose may call for a mixture of all the types of edi- 
torial writing that can be isolated by analysis. 

Certainly the beginner in editorial writing will find 
it helpful to employ such methods of analysis and 
classification as the one offered here. | 

One editor of note has described editorial purposes 
as: (1) to praise, (2) to blame, (3) to criticize, (4) 
to create dissatisfaction. These seem to refer prin- 
cipally to the content of the editorial. Editorial pur- 
poses are described in final terms only when they re- 
fer to the effect sought on the reader’s mind. The 
ultimate purpose of an editorial does not have to do 
with its content, but with its effect on the composite 
reader or readers collectively. Praise, or blame, or 
criticism may be used to inform, to interpret, to con- 
vince, to influence, or even to entertain. 

But if any one finds it helpful to classify editorials 
superficially as to content, he should be encouraged 
to do so. The important thing is that the person who 
is to devote the whole or a part of his life to editorial 
writing should make it a subject of serious study, en- 
deavoring to get a view of it in what may be called its 
scientific aspects. 


CHAP THRIV1 


BUILDING THE. EDITORIAL 


The limitless variety of forms for the editorial is 
in striking contrast with the comparatively simple 
organization of the news story. While the structure 
of the news story affords considerable opportunity 
for “skilled labor,” the form regularly used is almost 
stereotyped. The principle governing the architecture 
of a news story is that the first consideration is a 
quick delivery of the essential facts, economizing the 
time of the reading public, followed by such elabora- 
tion as may be desired by any considerable proportion 
of readers. Governing the whole proce a is the 
law of reader interest, active or latent. 

The organization of an editorial is influenced by 
no such demands for rapidity, and the “gist of the 
story” seldom appears in the opening paragraph. The 
law of reader interest governs, as in the news story; 
but the editorial writer has far more freedom of 
action in winning attention. The news writer is 
limited to the facts of the story; the editorial writer 
is limited by nothing but the bounds of his informa- 
tion and the reach of his ingenuity. 

This latitude for the play of skill goes far to com- 

I0O 


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eo ec ee eG 
sit ei ate fi [iat dee i‘ 4b Ht on He 
iter eu ae Paani a a 
a a Gil i 
ae RTT uF a OT HH 
HEEL it ee 
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TTP TEAL la (li ih ul Mt ie 
leit tially peal Wy a ee 
ei Ea cea ce 
Hu gt Pl dete? iu ata 
) Ha ane i fi Ha 
| Pdegereals pis ii ij actus = at ii! HW u ijiad: it 
| tH EEN aT EH ATH 
f HEH if Halli itetitater! ut HEH fis] Hy 
aT TTT AEE ee nn 
Higa PH Ee TGS ann 
Leen Eh Her a 
7 hile ait { HF il patie q i eefettinaeadepee aug wi | 
{Hed piiitin ele nae TA PETE EER MEE PRET 
CHa! anne PTT TDL ditt iieske Taney 
4 ie 4 rs an § LM vad HHH . A x4 if aed 
: ee L at HUT jada 
Hi atin ee : i ie tea TH ED: ity o Padi 
i Fe ie ea eat HHH Eee EHR Ha te eH 
tf He Hh idea ‘Ih H P itil Hu ita dial 
1 in dt ff 1d the ie i] i HT Fe il Wana 
Pe gril bee tiated ple Wi te a Bes 
ee na ee Wel i it (alt z i Ht ti 
tl i Uae iat 1 el by a ini ea i Hi i 
al t ¥ tage 4405 pe idan? 
abe tai al ak He THUG it TAL RT nae ileal i 


MourNING FOR PRESIDENT LINCOLN. 


IN 


THE EDITORIAL 


pensate the editor for his handicap in competition with 
the reporter whose offerings to the public are of 
greater intrinsic interest than anything else in the 
paper. 

The Principal Factors.—Three main factors are 
to be borne in mind when building an editorial: The 
materials, the public, the policies of the paper. 

However quickly the skilled editor may perform the 
task of organization, the process involves several well 
defined steps. The fact that an editorial writer may 
successfully organize his materials, even as he writes, 
should not obscure the nature of the process. It 
should be said in this connection that the inexperi- 
enced writer’ who does not have his work carefully 
blocked out before he begins writing is courting dis- 
aster. To say that much editorial writing is done in 
slipshod manner is but to state one of the principal 
reasons for its lack of effectiveness. Nothing but the 
mere details of organization may safely be attended 
to as one writes. 

A Lesson from Salesmanship.—Until thoughtful 
students of salesmanship—psychologists, whether or 
not they call themselves such—analyzed the sales op- 
eration into its several parts, there was no such thing 
as an intelligent or scientific method of developing 
sales ability. Since this analysis has been accom- 
plished, education in salesmanship for the inexperi- 
enced, and intelligent self-improvement of methods by 
the veteran salesman, have been made possible. In a 
similar manner, separation of the steps by which any 
piece of successful writing is produced—excepting, of 

102 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


course, those inspired works for the creation of which 
genius is supposed to assume control of the human 
agent—enables a writer to work constantly towards a 
chosen end, to avoid the irrelevant, to be sure that he 
is doing his utmost to carry the reader with him. This 
subjecting of the editorial building process to analysis 
is comparable to the slowing down of action accom- 
plished in those moving picture films which present de- 
liberately to the beholder every detail of such rapid 
movements as pole vaulting or throwing a ball. 

Looking Over the Pile—Organization may be 
‘said to begin at the point where the editor, having 
gathered his materials on any given subject, by means 
of reading or observation or reflection or conversation 
or experience, sees them, as it were, dumped in a pile 
before him. He will, of course, have had from the 
first a tentative idea of the form of the editorial, and 
will have been guided, in his quest of materials, by 
that idea; but the main task of organization is yet to 
be performed. The first step calls for the separation 
of the conglomerate mass of facts, opinions, argu- 
ments, appeals, examples, into separate piles accord- 
ing to their relationships. Whether or not a writer 
is assisted by the visualizing method of making notes 
on paper, the process will be the same. 

Assume There Will Be a Reader.—Having thus 
classified his materials, the judicious editor considers 
carefully his reading public in relation to the subject 
he is handling: 

1. What is the present information of the public 
on the subject to be presented ? 

103 


THE EDITORIAL 


2. Is there an awakened interest in the matter, or 
must latent interest be aroused? 

3. What about the typical reader’s receptivity—his 
prejudice for or against? 

4. Is it necessary to write primarily for the “think- 
ing public,” or for those having lower intellectual in- 
terests ? 

5. Is it a problem of telling the public something 
that it wants to know, or something that it needs to 
know? 

“Inside” Considerations.—Having reached a de- 
cision on such matters as these, the editorial writer 
turns his attention to the third main consideration, 
the policies of the paper : 

I. Does the subject have close relation to one of 
those things which the paper has adopted as its spe- 
cial concern? 

2. Is it a matter which, from the standpoint of 
policy, requires no emphasis? 

3. Is it likely to initiate a long-time campaign for 
some object involved? 

4. Does it contribute to the advancement of some 
movement—political, social or economic—which, on 
the whole, the paper regards as beneficial ? 

Following the decision of such general questions as 
these, comes consideration of specific plans for ar- 
rangement of the materials. 

A Prime Question of Detail—First comes the 
choosing of the idea for the opening sentence or para- 
graph which shall be one hundred per cent effective— 
in other words, getting the right “slant” on the ques- 

104 


‘ 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


tion; approaching it from the best point of view. This 
is merely a problem in salesmanship. The editor is the 
salesman and it is his business to present his goods 
in such a way as to win attention and interest—a fair 
chance for making a “sale.” All the skill of the trained 
diplomat is called for at this point. It is true that an 
editorial does not “need a porch”; but an attractive 
doorstep and entrance are quite essential. 

In discussing these questions as to approaching the 
subject, a veteran Boston editor says: “No two writers 
will ever approach or handle the same subject from 
the same angle or in the same way. Their points of 
view are not the same; the impressions they draw are 
different ; their conclusions may be as far apart as the 
antipodes. Of course, there are some general lines 
that all will follow. There is adherence, for example, 
to established policy. There are unwritten but plainly 
discernible laws, called office usage, which all alike 
observe. The editorial writer should know, and with 
a considerable degree of nicety, for instance, just what 
his latitude is in the treatment of his subjects. He 
ought to have the “feel” of his office. He must realize 
that he is not talking for himself, but for his news- 
paper and for all that it represents; he should realize 
as he writes that others must bear the larger share 
of the responsibility for what he says and for his man- 
ner of saying it; he must take into his consciousness 
the fact that thousands everywhere will accept the 
views to which he gives expression as those of one 
having authority.” 

Disarming Antagonism.—The main difficulty 

105 


THE EDITORIAL 


may be to find an idea which can be relied upon to 
disarm antagonism known to exist, so as to secure an 
open-minded hearing. 

In one office, the way to go about it is described 
thus: 


Expression can be tempered, softened in a way as to 
state almost any honest conclusion. 

Benjamin Franklin handled these situations by saying: 
“An old man once told me.” 

In this way he presented the idea without the responsi- 
bility of direct statement and softened it with the element 
of age. 

On the treatment of subjects where the readers are 
known to hold another view it is well to state frankly 
that there is another view, about as follows: 

“Obviously, there are two sides to this question, and 
this.is only one side.” 


Many people deprecate drastic action aimed at 
breaking down methods of doing things which are well 
established, but not abreast of the times. In the fol- 
lowing editorial, the Kansas City Journal leads off with 
a statement that everybody must assent to. LAfter 
that, it is comparatively easy to get the reader to ac- 
cept the application of the same principle to the case 
in hand. 5] . 
LAW AND DIRTY DAIRIES 
What an unthinkable absurdity it 
would be for a policeman to stand idly 
by while a highwayman beat up an in- 


offensive citizen, on the theory that 
the law did not seek to “punish” the 


106 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


highwayman and would give him an 
hour or so to stop his brutal assault? 
Yet that hypothetical absurdity is 
scarcely less ridiculous than the pres- 
ent theory of the law enforcing agen- 
cies that those who plainly break the 
laws are entitled to a period of ref- 
ormation without penalties and must 
not be “punished” for wrong-doing, if 
they merely promise to behave at some 
future date.. Here is a concrete il- 
lustration of the Kansas City idea of 
how laws should be enforced: 

Two city dairymen were cited two 
weeks ago to appear before the hos- 
pital and health board to answer to the 
charge of maintaining insanitary dairy 
premises. Instead of meeting with 
prompt and salutary punishment for 
thus endangering public health, these 
offenders were given an indefinite num- 
ber of days to “reform.” 


Or the subject may be so old and so familiar that 
the chief task in opening the editorial is to find some 
way of putting it in a fresh light. 

The people of Cleveland were doubtless so familiar 
with the need of street signs as to be immune to any 
discussion of the subject that did not approach it from 
an unusual angle. The Press handled it thus: 


STREET NAMES 


A good many American cities invari- 
ably arrive at that point in their ca- 
reers where they acquire the self-con- 
ceit that they are so big, so metropoli- 
tan, so well known that’ when some per- 
son from the Rest of the World comes 
along he just naturally can’t help know- 
ing where Main Street is and where 


107 


THE EDITORIAL 


Whoozies Avenue intersects and where 
Umteenth Street branches off. 

Ninety-nine times out of a hundred 
the stranger doesn’t know. He’s there 
on business. Or perhaps he’s a motor- 
ist, there on pleasure. Anyway he 
wants to know how to find his way 
about. 

He pauses at the corner and cusses. 
He has to appeal to a policeman or a 
bystander—because he can’t: find any 
street signs. 

Apparently street signs have gone out 
of fashion in most American cities. 
Mostly they do not exist. 

Returned soldiers will tell you the 
labyrinth of streets in Paris is worse 
than Boston. But he will also tell you 
that every corner in Paris has its full 
quota of street signs. It’s strange— 
but in Europe, supposed to be less pro- 
gressive than America, most cities are 
well equipped in this respect. 

A stranger goes away with a glow 
of pride and a pat on the back for him- 
self. and tells the folks back home that 
he had no trouble at all finding his way 
around. It’s an automatic boost for the 
city. 


Then comes the question: will the best results be 
likely to follow a direct, positive, open, smashing ap- 
proach or an indirect, interrogative or human-interest 
manner of opening? 

This opening paragraph of an editorial from the 
Chicago Tribune states forcefully the paper’s attitude: 


THE COLOMBIAN SANDBAG 


Colombia wants from the United 
States $25,000,000 because we built a 
world institution, the Panama Canal, 


108 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


which Colombia never could have built 
and which Colombia would have pre- 
vented had it been possible. If we pay 
the $25,000,000 it is hush money. It 
is no good disguising it. 


The editor of the Philadelphia Public Ledger evi- 
dently saw no reason for beating about the bush in 
this instance: 


THE PREACHER’S PAY 


The wages of ministers have always 
been too low; everybody knows that 
periodically efforts are made to raise 
the salaries, and of late these attempts 
have been crowned with noteworthy 
success in the case of several of the 
leading denominations. But there is 
still small risk, apparently, of the pro- 
fession of the clergyman being over- 
paid. 


Then follows an account of a specific instance taken 
from the editor’s acquaintance. 

In this connection it may be said that the specific 
instance has wonderful appeal as an editorial open- 
ing. Its use would have strengthened the editorial just 
quoted. It has for the adult reader the same fascina- 
tion that “Once upon a time” has for the child. 

In the following from the Washington Evening Star, 
the narrative opening leads directly to the thesis of the 


editorial: 
{THE BATHING eae DROW N- 
IN 


A man was drowned the other after- 
noon at the bathing beach. One of his 
companions declares that indifference 


109 


THE EDITORIAL 


was shown by the lifeguard when the 
man’s disappearance was noted and that 
long delay occurred before aid was ren- 
dered. It develops, too, that there is 
at the beach no pulmotor for the re- 
suscitation of those overcome in the 
water. A coroner’s inquest has been 
ordered and will doubtless disclose the 
facts. 

It is of the utmost importance to as- 
sure the fullest possible safeguards at 
the beach against accidents. Bathers 
will get beyond their depth and will be 
in danger of drowning. If there are 
not enough lifeguards more must be 
provided. If those on duty are not 
competent or alert to respond to calls 
for aid they must be replaced by oth- 
ers. 


As an example of the oblique approach, the follow- 
ing is reprinted from an editorial in the Christian 
Science Monitor dealing with the upheavals in govern- 
ment in Costa Rica and in Peru: 


POPULAR WILL AND THE COUP 
D'ETAT 


Anybody who is at all familiar with 
the idea that gives distinctive character 
to the United States form of govern- 
ment must see clearly that there is no 
place in the neighborhood of that idea 
for sympathy with what, in politics, is 
known as a coup d’etat. The very es- 
sence of a coup d’etat is sudden, de- 
cisive exercise of power for subversion 
of existing government without the con- 
sent of the people, whereas the United 
States idea would debar all essential 
change in the form of government ex- 
cepting when based on the deliberate 
expression of the will of the popular 


IIO 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


majority. The United States may be 
said to manifest a constitutional aver- 
sion to such a thing as a coup d’etat; 
yet, while the country incurs small like- 
lihood of having to deal with that kind 
of political effort at home, it has more 
than once been brought face to face 
with it in other countries, and is even 
now in a position of some question by 
reason of so-called coups d’etat that 
have recently brought about political 
changes in two rather important coun- 
tries to the south. 


In discussing so trite a subject as the value of high 
thinking and serious purposes, the Minneapolis Journal 
chose a human-interest or whimsical opening: 


THE SLEEPLESS BROWNIES 


“How often,” exclaims Robert Louis 
Stevenson, “have these sleepless Brown- 
ies done me honest service, and given 
me, as I sat idly taking my pleasure 
in the boxes, better tales than I could 
fashion myself!” 

Nearly every one is acquainted with 
these Brownies. How often one tries 
to recall a friend’s name, but it does 
not come upon demand! Hours or even 
days pass; suddenly, when least ex- 
pected, it flashes across the mind. Or 
possibly it is a mathematical problem 
that has been troubling the student. 
He works and works, but without avail. 
Then some morning, with the first 
awakening, the solution is delivered be- 
fore the breakfast hour. 

The old school of thinkers used to 
call this inspiration or _ revelation. 
There were Brownies in the mind, 
sprites or fairies. They came down 
from upon high. Inspiration was 
breathed into one from without—it 


IIt 


THE EDITORIAL 


came when it would, and there was no 
controlling it. 

Modern psychology admits the pres- 
ence of these Brownies in the mind, 
but says that they are not supernatural. 
Brownies come from the cellar of the 

‘| house of life. They dwell beneath the | 
threshold of the mind in the regions 
| of the subconscious. | 


Let us consider typical openings used for editorials 
of the five main types or purposes. 

If the predominant purpose is to give information, 
the opening sentences will present merely some strik- 
ing and interesting fact, as in this editorial from the 
New York Tribune. 


JUNE—TWENTY YEARS AFTER 


Twenty years ago there might have 
been point in remarking, “What is so 
rare as a play in June?” Files of the 
Tribune reveal that back in June, 1899, 
only five theaters were open. New York 
was less populous then, of course. Its 
weather was no warmer, however, al- 
though men dressed . more warmly. 
That was before Palm Beach had be- 
come a textile and while waistcoats were 
still listed as essentials. In that state 
theater going and ice skating were still 
winter sports. 


If the purpose is interpretation, the opening may be 
designed merely to whet the reader’s interest in know- 
ing the answer, as in this from the New York Times: 


THE BOOKLOVER’S SHOP 


What has become of the old-fashioned 
book shop, the booklover’s shop? It| 


II2 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


is a place of fragrant memory. There 
the schoolboy bought his first textbooks, 
while on the serried shelves and well 
stocked counters he got his earliest and 
deeply awed idea of how much there 
is to know in the world. The studi- 
ous youth ransacked its treasures, cast- 
ing oblique glances, perchance, at the 
radiant young thing buying a novel, 
whose very presence filled him with de- 
light and consternation. There the vil- 
lage lawyer, doctor, and minister came 
at the noon hour to get the morning 
paper, fresh from the city, and lingered 
to exchange professional experiences or 
to discuss the latest books, of which 
they had read in a quarterly review. 
The proprietor was a host in the true 
sense of the word, welcoming each and 
all with the personal glance, the inti- 
mate word, and assisting in the most 
thrilling of all adventures—which is to 
dip into a tempting volume, weigh it, 
resist it prudently for days perhaps, 
and then buy it triumphantly, to be for- 
ever one’s own. 


Similarly, when the object is interpretation of hu- 
man nature, the editor usually begins by stating the 
problem, as in this from the Topeka Daily Capital: 


WHY BROTHERS AND SISTERS 
QUARREL 


Nature works in mysterious ways. 

We are in receipt of a letter from a 
mother, asking why it is that brothers 
and sisters never seem to get on well 
together; that while they may never 
fight or quarrel yet they rarely live to- 
gether in harmony. 

She says that this spirit manifests it- 
self very early in child life, that it was 
true with herself and her own brother, 


113 


THE EDITORIAL 


and that it is now true with her young 
son and daughter, and that she has also 
observed it in the households of her 
neighbors. 


The Manchester (England) Guardian thus points 
out the meaning of two great achievements in air 
navigation : 


~ 


THE R 34 


There is a story of a Gurkha bat- 
talion which took up Rugby football as 
an experiment, and, when one of the 
players was killed, adopted it with great 
enthusiasm, declaring that a game in 
which a man could have his neck broken 
at the first attempt was not to be 
equaled by any other known. The same 
feeling partly explains how the furious 
excitement caused by the aeroplane 
flights across the Atlantic has been fol- 
lowed by the sedate departure of the 
R 34. The voyage of the R 34 is much 
the more important of the two. The 
aeroplane has no future, and very lit- 
tle present, in transoceanic travel; the 
flights from Newfoundland were gal- 
lant adventures, audacious essays in 
the creation of new “records.” The 
journey of the R 34 is really useful to 
the human race. The airship has a so- |} 
cial value. It is not definite as yet, 
but these preliminary voyages and a 
few years’ mechanical development will 
help us to define it. The R 34 is a 
giant, but in the family of giants it is 
only a youngster of some 2,000,000 cu- 
bic feet, with a lift under 40 tons. 
Shortly we shall have ships of 10,000,- 
ooo cubic feet, not more than twice the 
bulk of the R 34, but with a lift of 
five times as great—200 tons or, omit- 
ting the allowance for crew and water 


114 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


ballast, 170 tons for fuel and freight. 
It is already possible to work out 
roughly the capital charges for airships, 
stations, and personnel, but we have 
everything yet to learn about the time 
that is likely to be taken in an Atlantic 
flight, the amount of fuel consumed, 
and the risks and delay from bad 
weather which are involved. This voy- 
age of the R 34 is the beginning of our 
knowledge. That our big airships can 
cross the Atlantic and return is already 
not in doubt; if the first for any rea- 
son failed, a second would succeed. 
But whether a service can be main- 
tained which is regular as well as fast 
and which is sufficiently economical to 
compete with the steamship on the one 
hand and the telegraph on the other— 
that. raises many questions. With the 
voyage of the R 34 we are beginning 
to grope after the answers. 


It is an old rule of education to proceed from the 
known to the unknown. The rule is applicable to 
editorials. In fact a special interest seems to flavor 
an editorial that begins with something so utterly well 
known as to arouse curiosity regarding the purpose 
of stating it. The “unknown” in such cases is usually 
the clever drawing of a moral that would hardly sug- 
gest itself to the mind of a writer lacking unusual im- 
aginative penetration. The following are the opening 
paragraphs from an editorial in the New York Eve- 
ning Journal: 


DISCONTENT THE MOTIVE 
POWER OF PROGRESS 


At first the baby lies flat on his back, 
eyes staring up at the ceiling. 


115 


LEE EE DITORTA 


| By and by he gets tired of lying on | 
his back. Discontent with his condi- 
tion makes him wriggle and wriggle. 
At last he succeeds in turning over. 

If he were contented then, there 
would be no men on earth—only huge 
babies. But discontent again seizes 
him, and through discontent he learns 
to crawl. 

Crawl—traveling on hands and knees 
—satisfied lower forms of animal life. 
It used to satisfy us, in the old days of 
early evolutionary stages. 

But the human infant—thanks to in- 
born ,cravings—is discontented with 
crawling. With much trouble and risk 
and many feeble totterings, he learns 
to walk erect. He gets up into a po- 
sition that takes his eyes off the ground. 
He is able to look at the sun and stars 
and takes the position of a man. Dis- 
content is his mainspring at every stage. 

What discontent does in the limited 
life of a child, it does on a much larger 
scale in the life of a man—and on a 
scale still larger in the life of a 
race. 


The following, though it is merely a plea for con- 
tentment in spite of the absence of an automobile, in- 
volves interpretation of one common aspect of life. — 
It is taken from the Los Angeles Times: 


THE TRAVELERS 


Somebody—wasn’t it Price Collier? 
—once remarked that Socrates on his 
donkey traveled considerably further 
than Willie Highball in his sixty-horse 
power, motor car. 

The sapiency of this observation can 
be best appreciated, perhaps, by the man 
who doesn’t own a car. All others are 


116 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


moving so rapidly—nowhere—that they 
haven’t the breath to stop to think about 
it. Maybe, too, many of them haven’t 
the brain. 

Of course Mr. Collier was only tell- 
ing us over again what we have known 
for a long time—that the man who stays 
quietly at home sees more of the world 
than he who trots all over it. The cos- 
mos envelops an acre quite as com- 
pletely as it encircles a continent. All 
roads lead to home even more surely 
than they lead to Rome. All suns rise 
and set behind our own familiar hills. 

You and Socrates may travel to the 
stars and return early the same night. 


The following indirect approach to an interpretation 
of the meaning of the Whitman Centenary is quoted 
from the Minneapolis Journal: 


WALT WHITMAN’S CENTENARY 


A question that came before a New 
York court the other day was this: 
“Does a bagpipe produce music or 
noise?” The court is still meditating, 
and perhaps looking up precedents, but 
the court of ordinary common sense has 
long since handed down the decision 
that the bagpipe produces music for one 
class of persons and noise for another. 

Any court would have the same dif- 
ficulty in passing on the question 
whether Walt Whitman, who was born 
one hundred years ago yesterday on 
Long Island, was a poet. To those who 
admire, love and revere, and, what is 
more, read and absorb him, Whitman is 
among the great names of earth. 


If the editorial purpose is to convince by argument, 
a common practice is to come immediately to the point 


EX7. 


THE EDITORIAL 


by advancing one of the strongest reasons for the 
position taken, as in this selection from the Detroit 


News: 
GIVE US THAT BUDGET 


There is great need to point out again 
that if the United States had an ex- 
ecutive budget, the War Department 
would not now have to endure the re- 
proach of gross carelessness in the prep- 
aration of its estimates. 

Something is vitally wrong in a finan- 
cial system that allows an appropria- 
tion bill to come before the House with 
a duplication of $2,447,000,000 in a total 
of $8,793,000,000, 


Or, if the editor knows that his readers are opposed 
to his view, he may choose for his point of departure 
a bit of neutral ground on which he and the reader 
stand in agreement. In the following from the Port- 
land Morning Oregoman, sympathy is shown with the 
opposition in order to get consideration for the needs 
of the schools: 


WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE? 


The problem of new and adequate 
schoolhouses for Portland is not to be 
met by denying that it exists, or by 
merely voting down the $2,500,000 
bonds. It is not agreeable to contem- 
plate a large bond issue. It is even 
less agreeable to impose an additional 
2-mill tax levy. Neither can be done 
without the affirmative action of the 
tax payers. If the bonds will not carry, 
the 2-mill levy cannot carry. 

* * * 2k * 

If not bonds, what? No good citi- 

zen wants to impair the development 


118 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


of the school system, or deny the chil- 
dren comfortable and sanitary housing; 
but he would like to find some way to 
keep out of further debt and yet do 
this duty. 

The Oregonian will frankly say that 
it does not like the idea of the bonds. 
But it likes less the apparent alterna- 
tive—which is to stunt the growth of 
the public schools. Is there a citizen 
anywhere who will say that the schools, 
with their admitted imperfections, are 
not worth all they cost, and more, much 
more? 


If the purpose is to persuade to action, the begin- 
ning must deal with whatever is necessary by way of 
information, interpretation, or argument to prepare the 
reader for whole-hearted assent through suggestion or 
appeal to follow. | 

The New York World made an appeal to action 
against the billboard evil, introducing the subject thus: 


A BILLPOSTERS’ OFFENSIVE 


That the widespread and unrestricted 
posting of bills for the Fourth Liberty 
Loan, probably the greatest advertising 
campaign the world has ever known, 
should result in  billposting abuses 
against private property interests is 
deplorable, but not surprising. The 
ubiquitous billposter never misses an op- 
eM to make himself disagree- 
able. 


Paving the way for an appeal against destructive 
criticism, the Philadelphia Public Ledger puts forward 
a few generalizations: 


119 


THE EDITORIAL 
BOOSTING 


The public servant and the private 
benefactor are boosters. 

They bring encouragement where 
they go. They try to find the kind and 
pleasant thing to say. Yet they do not 
make themselves ridiculous by an in- 
discriminate profusion of compliment. 

There are always with us the people 
who love the music of the hammers of 
destruction. 

They tear down ruthlessly, without 
ever asking what is to go up in the 
place of that which was removed. 
They are engineers of annihilation 
merely. 

But upon the other sort of folk there 
rests a blessing—those who constantly 
build, in faith and prayer, and fidelity 
to a trust. 

It cannot be a great satisfaction to 
come upon a green place, ruin it and 
leave a waste of devastation. It can- 
not make a man happy to rob another 
of a good name which it took a long 
time to acquire. But it must be a real 
pleasure to feel that one has spent a 
lifetime pushing what deserves to be 
pushed—forwarding a man or a move- 
ment that has the right to win. 


A spirited, hammer-and-tongs opening of one of 
Henry Watterson’s editorials in the Louisville Courier- 
Journal illustrates well the rabble-rousing style of per- 
suasive writing: 


The man who is for peace at any 
price—who will fight on no provoca- 
tion—for no cause—is apt to be either 
what men call “a poor creature,” or an 
impostor set on by ulterior considera- 
tions. He may have an unworthy mo- 


I20 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


tive, or a selfish interest, or he may be 
a victim of the coward’s fear of battle, 
or be obsessed by the doctrinaire’s the- 
ory of universal brotherhood. But, 
craven or crank, or scheming rogue, he 
dishonors the noble heritage of man- 
hood which, being common to us all, 
is only prized and extolled in conspic- 
uous cases of sacrifice, or prowess. 


Persuasion towards improving moral conditions is 
naturally based on an introductory statement of those 
conditions, as in this opening of an editorial from the 
Kansas City Journal: 


AUTOMOBILES AND MORALITY 


Declaring it their purpose to put an 
end to the intolerable exhibitions of 
immorality on the part of automobile 
parties that nightly scandalize the resi- 
dential sections of this city, the police 
authorities have made this a_ special 
subject of orders to the department. 
This is a reasonably prompt and ener- 
getic response to the demands of those 
good citizens who have noted the in- 
crease of this form of trespass and who 
have complained of conditions that 
could no longer be condoned. The sur- 
prising fact is that the police did not 
long ago recognize the evil and take 
measures to stop it. This summer it 
has been far worse than ever before 
and has caused at least one murder in 
Kansas City’s most exclusive neighbor- 
hood. 


If the purpose is entertainment, the only suggestion 
that can safely be made is that the beginning should 
be such as to establish the tone of the whole editorial. 
This from “Casual Essays of the Sun” 

121 


THE EDITORIAL 


HAIRPINS 


The comprehensive merits of the 
hairpin are known to all observant men. 
Its special value in surgery is asserted 
by a writer in American Medicine. It 
seems that a surgeon can do almost 
anything with a hairpin. * * * 

Dullards will tell you that women 
aren't so inventive as men, don’t take 
out so many patents. They don’t have 
to. With the hairpin all that is doable 
can be done. With the hairpin a woman 
can pick a lock, pull a cork, peel an 
apple, draw out a nail, beat an egg, see 
if a joint of meat is done, do up a 
baby, sharpen a pencil, dig out a sliver, 
fasten a door, hang up a plate or a 
picture, open a can, take up a carpet, 
repair a baby carriage, clean a lamp 
chimney, put up a curtain, rake a grate 
fire, cut a pie, make a fork, a fishhook, 
an awl, a gimlet, or a chisel, a paper- 
cutter, a clothespin, regulate a range, 
tinker a sewing machine, stop a leak 
in the roof, turn over a flapjack, caulk 
a hole in a pair of trousers, stir bat- 
ter, whip cream, reduce the pressure in 
the gas meter, keep bills and receipts 
on file, spread butter, cut patterns, 
tighten windows, clean a watch, untie 
a knot, varnish floors, do practical 
plumbing, reduce the asthma of tobacco 
pipes, pry shirt studs into buttonholes 
too small for them, fix a horses’s har- 
ness, restore damaged mechanical toys, 
wrestle with refractory beer stoppers, 
improvise suspenders, shovel bonbons, 
inspect gas burners, saw cake, jab 
tramps, produce artificial buttons, hooks 
and eyes, sew, knit, and darn, button 
gloves and shoes, put up awnings, doc- 
tor an automobile. In short, she can 
do what she wants to; she needs no 
other instrument. . 


I22 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


And another from the same source: 


UNDER THE CIRCUMSTANCES 


Everybody has a right to take sugar 
in his coffee or not to take it, and there 
is nothing to prevent any person from 
disliking any word or phrase which he 
chooses to dislike. Still, when anybody 
takes the trouble to attack a respect- 
able, harmless, and _ well-intentioned 
phrase, as our correspondent does in the 
following letter, it would be an act of 
courtesy to the English language for 
him to disclose his motive and justifica- 
tion, if any he has. 

There are almost as many variations of this prob- 
lem of the opening as there are editorials. All methods 
are subject to exceptions. The typical examples given 
will at least serve to demonstrate that the form of 
beginning should be adopted for good and sufficient 
reasons—because it is the best one, not the first one, 
that comes to mind. 

The Second Strategic Point.—Since, in the case 
of most editorials, as of most sales letters and advertise- 
ments, the ending is next in importance, if not equal 
in importance, to the beginning, the editor makes an 
early selection of the element which he intends to 
put last. The oft-heard statement that the way to close 
an editorial is just to stop writing is one of the pet 
fallacies of those “natural born editors” who resent the 
idea that editorial writing is anything but unskilled 
labor. 

If the writer’s purpose is merely to give information, 
the problem of the ending presents no difficulty, but 

123 


THE EDITORIAL 


it is well to settle it before beginning to write. The 
pleasing “twist” at the close of an informative edi- 
torial about golf, in the New York Evening Post, was 
doubtless in the writer’s mind from the beginning: 


And then the mere fact that he found 
an unexpectedly strong and cool op- 
ponent where he was looking for one 
easy to beat, was certain to strike deep 
and hard into his golfer’s soul. Hence 
the golf psychologists will have no dif- 
ficulty in stating the exact why and 
wherefore of what happened, though 
they would have been as ready with an 
explanation if the reverse had occurred. 
But what more can you ask of a game 
than that it should be one good to play 
and still better endlessly to discuss? 


If his task is one of interpretation, the close of the 
editorial takes care of itself though it is probable that 
a skillful summing up of the whole matter in one 
illuminating sentence will be called for. 

Following a careful exposition of conditions in “Our 
Headless Aviation Service,” the Philadelphia Public 
Ledger closes with this summarization: 


What is wanted is a national depart- 
ment of aviation, under skilled direction 
and capable of exercising a control that 
would safeguard the men employed in 
every government ‘activity involving 
aviation, insure the encouragement of 
invention and utilize the very best and 
latest appliances that make for effi- 
ciency and safety. This nation cannot 
afford to slip backward in this most 
modern of arts, and above all things, 
it cannot afford to intrust the control of 
aérial activities to ignorant bureaucrats. 


124 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


In similar manner is this from the New Orleans 
Times-Picayune. 


Therefore we are pleased at the ac- 
tion of the American stockholders of the 
big shipping corporation, and trust the 
shadow of our Mercantile Marine, far 
from growing smaller, will continue 
rapidly to expand until it covers the 
earth. 


Interpretation of character, followed by application 
of the truth developed, is illustrated in the beginning 
and ending of the following from the Minneapolis 
Journal. 

The editorial opens thus: 


THE OLD BREED STILL ON 
EARTH 


Sergeant York of Tennessee! Pious, 
a church elder, thinking of entering the 
ministry, doubtful at first of the right- 
eousness of fighting, but as fighting man 
making the record of the whole war, 
twenty Germans killed, a hundred and 
thirty-two captured, and thirty-six ma- 
chine guns put out of action! What 
does he say in New York, where he is 
dined, made much of, interviewed? He 


ys: 

“T feel a heap stronger spiritually 
than when I went away. No man could 
pass through what I have without feel- 
ing that way.” 


And ends: 


No militarism can make such soldiers. 
The Prussian system will discipline 
men to die by the thousand, but no| 


125 


THE EDITORIAL 


Prussian could be the efficient fighter 
that nature made Sergeant York. He 
was out, not to die himself, but to kill 
as many Germans as possible and to 
dispatch them skillfully. He possessed 
the initiative of the free American, the 
resourcefulness of the pioneer, the 
deadly accuracy of a descendant of gen- 
erations of squirrel shooters, deer stalk- 
ers, coon hunters, Indian fighters. The 
old breed is still on earth. 


Problem Greater for Third Type.—lIf, however, 
the object is to carry conviction to the mind of the 
reader, greater difficulties enter—the same problems 
that must be met by the lawyer planning the conclusion 
of an address to the jury. 

It is safe to say that one invariable rule is to select 
in the beginning, and reserve for use at the end, the 
strongest argument that can be made; or to use in the 
conclusion a rapid summary of all the principal argu- 
ments placing the “clincher” last. It is not practicable 
to consider here the principles of argumentation; but 
it may be said in passing that a study of logic and 
argumentation, for which limitless facilities are avail- 
able, will richly repay any editor. 

A forceful conclusion to the argument is attained in 
this editorial from the Cincinnati Enquirer: 


FROM DOWN ON PHARISEE 
FARM 


One of the darling beliefs of the 
dweller without urban limits is that he 
is better than the dweller within them. 
Vice and misery are the portions of the 
wicked who reside in these wildernesses 


126 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


of brick and stone and virtue and joy 
those of the rural resident. 

Very likely the Pharisee who gave 
selfish thanks on the porch of the Tem- 
ple in Jerusalem had just come in from 
his farm. 

* * * * * 

It is his notion that if the “loafers in 
town and city” could be made to pay 
$5 or do two days of real work on the 
roads Ohio would soon have a system 
as good as that in France. 

The fact that the state constitution 
forbids this form of taxes apparently 
does not weigh heavily with the bu- 
colic statesman in embryo. Nor does 
the additional fact that the cities are 
now furnishing about 70 per cent of 
the contributions toward building and 
repairing highways seem to have im- 
pressed him. 

* * * * * 

The action of the General Assembly 
will tax the people of Ohio more than 
$50,000,000 for road building. 

The bulk of it will be paid into the 
treasury by the “loafers” in the towns 
and cities, too. 


And this final paragraph from an editorial in the 
Chicago Tribune: 

American citizens in Colombia are not 
to be protected by the payment of 
bribes. If human rights are in doubt 
in Colombia there is a swift and just 
way of establishment. We suggest that 
the senate bid Colombia beware the 
sandbag in its relations with this coun- 
try. 

Where Action Is the Objective.—If the object of 
the editorial is to appeal to the emotions and thereby 
arouse an active response, the editorial will close with 

127 


THE EDITORIAL 


the feature of greatest persuasiveness. In written 
forms of salesmanship, this most persuasive element 
has commonly been regarded as the sentence of sug- 
gestion or direct command. As to the influence of 
skillful suggestion in persuading the human being— 
intellectual or crude—to do what he ought to do, or is 
asked to do, there can be no controversy. The effective- 
ness of the direct command, however, is much in 
doubt. It seems to have been used so much that it 
has largely lost any virtue that it may have had origi- 
nally. In most cases it seems likely to antagonize the 
reader. A bit of exhortation if it is not “preachy,” 
an appeal which vividly relates the desired course of 
action with those “effective concepts” approved by the 
normal reader—pity, courageousness, altruism, self- 
interest, fear, emulation—is almost certain to promote 
the end sought. 

This ending of an editorial in the Chicago Tribune 
on the coal situation is mild and yet persuasive—more 
persuasive, probably, than if it had been dictatorial. 
The facts themselves do the persuading: 


In the meantime we would suggest 
that the wise householder will not de- 
lay in putting in his winter’s supply of 
coal. The fuel administration has prac- 
tically relinquished its control and it 
does not seem likely that the benevo- 
lent system of distribution which pre- 
vailed last winter will be continued. 


The following example of an editorial ending with 
suggestion is from the Wichita Beacon: 
128 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


GO-TO COLLEGE 


Kansas is generally prosperous this 
year. 

There was never a better time for 
young people to go to college. 

Kansas has many excellent educa- 
tional institutions. They offer prac- 
tically any of the courses that may be 
desired. They should be utilized to 
their full capacity this year. 

A college education is the greatest 
single factor in the practical world to 
give people what is usually called vi- 
sion. Vision is that faculty which en- 
ables people to look farther than the 
fleshly material wants and strive for the 
things that give spiritual and mental 
satisfaction. “Where there is no vision 
the people perish.” 

Perhaps the greatest single function 
of a college education is not to fill up 
the head with learning, as a cistern is 
filled with water, but to create a de- 
sire for more learning by enlarging the 
capacity. The average person who goes 
to college finds that he knows very lit- 
tle after all, and comes out longing for 
the broadening experiences that come 
from a knowledge of the world’s great 
achievements in art, literature and sci- 
ence. It gives the average person that 
worthy discontent which animated Co- 
lumbus, Galileo and Isaac Newton. 

Go to college this fall. 


The persuasion in this closing paragraph from an 
editorial in the Kansas City Journal is in its humani- 
tarian appeal: 


A dairyman who is given two or three 
weeks to clean up his dairy barns is 
given just that much time to keep on 
selling filthy milk placed on the mar- 


129 


THE EDITORIAL 


ket in Kansas City as pure and safe. If 
a single baby is made sick or is caused 
to die because of this form of ill-ad- 
vised leniency, the terrible blame must 
be shared by those in authority. The 
only way to bring respect for, and 
obedience to the law is to enforce it 
without hesitation or favor. Leniency 
may be condoned in some forms of 
lawlessness, but not when human lives 
are endangered. Sentimental consider- 
ation for ignorant, incompetent and de- 
fiant dairymen ought not weigh for a 
moment against the life of an innocent 
and helpless child. 


A “spruce up” editorial in the Kansas City Star 
employed imagination to produce this pictorial ending: 


Now that the visitors are coming 
ought not Kansas City to take particu- 
lar pains to wash its face—getting clear 
around behind the ears—and brush its 
clothes, and polish its shoes and slick 
down ‘its hair? Wouldn’t that be good 
business? 


A notable example of impassioned appeal is the 
close of the editorial for which Henry Watterson re- 
ceived the Pulitzer prize of $500 in 1917: 


All the while we looked on with either 
simpering idiocy, or dazed apathy. 
Servia? It was no affair of ours. Bel- 
gium? Why should we worry? Food- 
stuffs soaring—war stuffs soaring— 
everybody making money—the mer- 
cenary, the poor of heart, the mean of 
spirit, the bleak and barren of soul could 
still plead the Hypocrisy of Uplift and 
chortle: “I did not raise my boy to be 
a soldier.’ Even the Lusitania did not 
awaken us to a sense of danger and 


130 


congruous ideas. 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


arouse us from the stupefaction of ig- 
norant and ignoble self-complacency. 

First of all on bended knee we 
should pray God to forgive us. Then 
erect as men, Christian men, soldierly 
men, to the flag and the fray—wherever 
they lead us—over the ocean—through 
France to Flanders—across the Low 
Countries to Koln, Bonn, and Koblenz 
—tumbling the fortress of Ehrenbreit- 
stein into the Rhine as we pass and 
damming the mouth of the Moselle with 
the débris of the ruin we make of it— 
then on, on to Berlin, the Black Horse 
Cavalry sweeping the Wilhelmstrasse 
like lava down the mountain side, the | 
Junker and the saber rattler flying be- 
fore us, the tunes being “Dixie” and 
“Yankee Doodle.” the cry being, “Hail 
the French Republic—Hail the Repub- 
lic of Russia—welcome the Common- 
wealth of the Vaterland—no peace with 
the Kaiser—no parley with Autocracy, 
Absolutism, and the divine right of 
Kings—to Hell with the Hapsburg and 
the Hohenzollern!” 


If the purpose of the editorial is primarily to en- 
tertain, the ending calls for no special attention be- 
yond the obvious desirability of reserving for the last, 
one of the most humorous, whimsical, witty, or in- 
A delightful type of ending is that 
which contains a surprise, or an unexpected twist. 

An editorial writer in the Christian Science Monitor, 
after a column of whimsical comment on “Bird Ponds” 
and the etiquette observed by the feathered bathers, 


closes thus: 


On one occasion only is a bird pond, 
otherwise, at all times, a source of much 
satisfaction, an occasion for humilia- 


13E 


THE EDITORIAL 


tion. It is after a heavy shower of rain, 
when the garden paths or dips in the 
lawn show lambent pools here and 
there which were not there a few hours 
before. Then are the birds inclined to 
desert the pond specially provided for 
them, and make use of the new gifts 
that have come their way. The sense 
of humiliation, however, is only momen- 
tary. A fellow feeling sweeps it away, 
in a moment. For even to humans, is 
there not something extraordinarily at- 
tractive about puddles? 


Frequently the editorial itself is little more than an 
elaborate preparation for a quite unexpected conclu- 
sion. This device, which O. Henry employed so de- 
lightfully in his short stories, is equally useful to the 
writer of that type of light essay appearing in the 
newspaper as the editorial of entertainment. 

Conventional Rules Apply.—As to the body of 
the editorial, the rules of successful organization are 
the conventional rules of rhetoric and the proper han- 
dling of exposition, argument, persuasion, narration, 
and description, such as are found, for example, in 
Cairn’s “Forms of Discourse.” These are not subjects 
for discussion here. All that need be said is that every 
element in the structure must meet the requirement 
that it contribute to the realization of the writer’s 
ultimate aims. At this point, if not before, the question 
arises as to the length to which the editorial may be 
judiciously allowed to run. It is an excellent plan to 
read through the completed editorial with the single 
question in mind: “If a hundred readers begin this edi- 
torial, when will the first one quit? Where are the 

132 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


other danger points of sagging interest? How many 
readers will stay to the end? What can be done to 
stop the leaks ?” 

A Clinic in Organization.—To illustrate briefly 
the theories of organization just discussed, let us as- 
sume that the state board of health has announced that 
a recurrence of an influenza epidemic may be expected 
within a few months, and that suitable measures are 
being taken to meet it. 

When the reporter has written a story, and perhaps 
interviewed local authorities to get the “home end” 
of the story, it passes out of his realm, unless new 
developments supply materials for follow-up stories. 

A day or two after its publication as news, the sub- 
ject of a threatened influenza epidemic appears in the 
field of the editorial writer. If he conceives that the 
first and paramount need of the public is for informa- 
tion, he may find that he is confronted by considerable 
difficulty in collecting the material from which to build 
an editorial, Among the phases of the subject which 
he may wish to investigate are: the origin and history 
of influenza epidemics; reasons to expect a recurrence 
after the first year; causes ascribed for the epidemic 
just passed; fatalities from it; methods of treatment 
employed ; improvements in treatment developed ; what 
can be done by public health agencies? What can 
be done by individuals? : 

The task of organizing this editorial of information 
is comparatively simple because in such a subject in- 
terest is easily maintained. 

It may be imagined, however, that the editor may 


133 


THE EDITORIAL 


decide that bad conditions of health administration in 
his town call for an editorial of an interpretative type. 
The casual reader of the news item will not see the 
local significance of the announcement by the board 
of health unless the editor points it out. This form 
of editorial will require less research—less extended 
reference to the “influenza” envelop of clippings and 
the encyclopedia. It will require, perhaps, fewer in- 
terviews with physicians and others having expert 
knowledge; but it will call for reflection and what pro- 
gressives of various kinds are wont to call “vision.” 

Or, under different conditions, the editorial writer 
may choose as his “slant” on the subject an out and 
out argument in favor of, say, sending a local bacteri- 
ologist to some well-known medical center to study ap- 
proved methods of innoculation. For this purpose he 
will need a considerable portion of the same informa- 
tion necessary for use in the editorial of the first type; 
but instead of presenting it merely as information, he 
organizes it into supporting arguments for his thesis. 
Very likely he will need to use considerable care in the 
beginning not to antagonize that element in every com- 
munity which opposes any unusual public expenditure. 
Or to put it differently, he will be sure that he has 
“sold them on a proposition” before he gives them a 
chance to think what it will cost. 

It is easy to imagine, however, that an editorial of 
the directly persuasive type, calculated to induce peo- 
ple to seek inoculation at once, may seem to be called 
for. In such a case, the editor’s hardest task is to 
overcome that human inertia which keeps people from 


134 


IN WRITING AN EDITORIAL 


The Editor Gets Ideas from 


Observation _Reflection Reading Conversation Experience 


He Considers the Requirements of 


Subject | Public Paper’s Policies 


He Decides What is the Predominant Purpose to be Accomplished 


To Inform Interpret Convince Persuade Entertain: 


He Organizes the Editorial with Great Care as to 


Beginning ‘Ending ~ Body Logic Appeal Climax 


Mindful of his Purpose he Writes in a Style Having 


Force Clearness Vividness Richness Humor Zest 


He Meets, to the Best of his Ability, his Responsibilities to 


The Paper Readers Community Journalism Society Himself 


135 


THE EDITORIAL 


acting, even though they are convinced. Guided by his 
knowledge of people, which experience with human 
nature and conversation with individuals on the sub- 
ject of innoculation have given him, he will use from 
his accumulation of information such facts as will 
stir the emotion of fear and the instincts of self-pres- 
ervation, parental care, emulation. He will emphasize 
the ease with which comparative safety may be at- 
tained, and will close his article with such directly 
persuasive remarks as he thinks likely to be effective. 

The fifth or entertainment type may seem hardly in 
place in connection with so serious a subject. For the 
sake of illustration, however, we may assume that the 
editor is optimistic about the situation; that the pre- 
cautions taken seem adequate and the codperation of 
the public assured. In such case he might decide to 
write merely light comment on the reception in store 
for the unsuspecting influenza microbe upon its arrival 
in town on the early fall breezes. 

It is not usual, however, nor is it desirable, for the - 
editor to write, or attempt to write, any one particular 
type of editorial as illustrated above. He will have a 
clearly conceived purpose and he will organize his 
editorial solely in the interests of that purpose; but 
he may easily find it necessary to mingle information 
and interpretation, argument and persuasion, and even 
entertainment, for the success of his literary venture. 

An important mechanical detail is paragraphing for 
clearness and for force. The only thing that should 
be said to supplement what may be found in any rhet- 
oric is that the effect of paragraphing in attracting and 

136 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


sustaining reader interest is a matter of legitimate con- 
cern, Short paragraphs in greater number than is 
absolutely required by the thought, are to be com- 
mended if there is a chance that they will increase 
the number of readers. As one writer puts it, “When 
in doubt, make a paragraph.” While few writers go 
to the extreme of using a preponderance of one-sent- 
ence paragraphs, yet the easy-to-read appearance of 
such matter is an advantage. 

This exaggerated use of paragraphing was found 
in the Cleveland Press: 


APPLES 


The way for us to keep boys on the 
farm is to show them the profit pos- 
sibilities of the farm during school 
years. 

Apples are the finest fruit in the 
world. . 

This is proven by the fact that there 
is a world-wide demand for them. 

Ohio is the finest apple soil in the 
world. 

This is also true of certain parts of 
most adjoining states. 

Yet all the eastern centers of popu- 
lation import apples from Oregon and 
pay 10 and 15 cents apiece for them. 

All that this means is that somebody 
who knew how to spray and graft trees 
lived in Oregon and started to produc- 
ing apples there; others saw the profit 
possibilities by example and did like- 
wise until a great horticultural indus- 
try was built up. 

This shows what knowledge and will 
can do in the face of natural disadvan- 


tages and remoteness. 
* * * * * 


137 


THE EDITORIAL 


The fundamental production of 
wealth in this country is agriculture— 
always has been and always will be. 

The great agricultural future for the 
eastern and central west states is in 
the garden and orchard, in order to feed 
the cities. 

The grain crops will be more and 
more left to the far west where the 
acreage is greater and cheaper. 

Considering the importance of agri- 
culture in fundamental wealth produc- 
tion, should we not take it into greater 
consideration in our public school 
courses—not only in the country but in 
the cities? 


The force of the one-sentence or one-word para- 
graph, in the midst of longer ones, is very great. 

The last question of organization to be settled is the 
choice of an idea to go into the heading. In this the 
editor will be guided by the same practical considera- 
tions that guide him in the choice of an opening—with 
the added requirement that the heading must be writ- 
ten with reference to the opening. The idea that edi- 
torial heads should be as dull as possible is giving way 
to that of applying to them the same rules of interest, 
action, vividness, that govern news headings. In the 
words of Arthur Brisbane: 


The same thing can be done in two ways. If you do 
it one way, you are only one of a thousand others; if you 
do it the other way you are the one man, or the one of a 
few men, who will attract attention. A few days ago there 
was in the papers an attack by Rabbi Hirsch on Moses 
and the dietary laws of the Jews. An editorial based on 
this attack might be headed “Analysis of the Dietetic 

138 


BUILDING THE EDITORIAL 


9 


Teachings of the Ancients,” and nobody would read it. 
Another heading would be, “Be Kind to Poor Old Moses; 
He Had no Icebox.” 


A leading American editor declares that he often re- 
writes an editorial four times. His conscientiousness 
and his industry are certainly commendable. His edi- 
torials bring results. But the chances are that he is 
using an expensive substitute for careful planning and 
organization in advance. If an editorial is thought out 
and outlined on paper before it is written, one revision 
for the purpose of eliminating unessential ideas and 
words and improving diction should be sufficient. 


CHAPTER VII 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


Chapters and even whole books on style are common 
enough to meet every need of the editorial writer seek- 
ing to cultivate his powers of expression, or of the 
student endeavoring to acquire ease and effectiveness 
in putting his thoughts on paper. 

All that need be attempted here is to place emphasis 
on a few matters that the writer of editorials must 
especially consider and put into practice—matters of 
which editorial writers of the more discerning and 
more vigorous type have always taken account. It was 
no less a master of style than Newman who declared 
that much newspaper writing suffers not at all by com- 
parison with the work of the greatest stylists in Eng- 
lish literature. 

Writing in the Atlantic Monthly for November, 
1919, Charles H. Grasty, publisher of the Baltimore 
Sun, comparing British and American newspapers, de- _ 
clares that the London papers are on the average bet- — 
ter written than ours. “Especially is this true of edi- 
torials, or leaders, as they are called over there.” He 
offers the explanation that “in an old country like 
England, writing is more of a profession than in 
America. Writers are bred from generation to gen- 

140 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


eration. In conceding superiority on the average, I 
except the editorial writing that one may find in a few 
of our American papers, which is of a high literary 
quality and perhaps excels in force. I am not sure 
that, taking the country as a whole, our journalism 
has sought to develop editorial writing in the English 
sense.” 

Interest Value of Style-—While not meant as a 
definition, the following by E, S. Martin, editor of 
Life, points out important essentials of a satisfactory 
style: 


The one essential of good writing is that it shall be 
interesting. And what makes this quality? It is a kind 
of personal charm, which enables the writer to turn or 
twist his words in such a way as to bring up a succession 
of pleasing sensations in the mind. The element of sur- 
prise is united with a sense of truth. 
¢ A good writer must have thought out his theme so 
completely, that, sure of himself, he always knows as he 
goes along what to omit. ) 


An example of Mr. Martin’s style—pictorial, whim- 
sical, smooth, homespun—follows : 


For two days the sufferings of New 
York from an acute case of impeded 
arteries took precedence of other pains. 
Circulation stopped completely in the 
Subway and on the Elevated, to the 
violent inconvenience of people who 
wanted to get to their work and of peo- 
ple who needed their services. * * * 

On the present basis of costs most 
people need more money, and ought to 


141 


THE EDITORIAL 


have it if there are available funds. 
The purchasing power of money is rap- 
idly evaporating. Some experts, like 
Professor Fisher of Yale, say it is be- 
cause there is too much gold in the 
country. Too much gold it seems may 
be as bad a pest as rats were in the war 
trenches. * * * 

The Subway and Elevated manage- 
ment did not want to raise pay enough 
to suit the strikers because they said 
they had not, and could not earn, the 
funds to do it. The disease that has 
attacked the dollar and impaired its 
purchasing power has also affected the 
nickel. Nickels cannot do what they 
did six years ago. 

Strikes in public utilities are just a 
milder form of war, and if a League of 
Nations is a likely cure for war, a 
league of every one affected by such 
strikes ought to be a likely cure for the 
strikes. The trick is always to bring 
the matters in dispute to some kind of 
a court, and the pinch is always to get 
the striking organization and the own- 
ing and operating organization to agree 
on some one whose judgment they will 
accept. 

The wages question is quite awful. 
Some people begin to say that we will 
have to split up into smaller groups 
for purposes of social life and indus- 
try, and set up imaginary walled towns 
in which the relations of the inhabi- 
tants and their work and their wages 
can be handled on a basis of mutual re- 
sponsibility and community welfare. 
People want to know how pride in 
work and joy in work are to be restored 
to a world out of which the factory 
system and quantity production have 
driven them. In the course of another 
twenty-five years their inquiries may be 
answered by practical demonstration, 
but the answer is not likely to be walled 


142 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


towns, nor yet enormous, country-wide 
organizations of workmen banded to- 
gether to extort advantages for them- 
selves out of the still larger public. 
Somehow quantity production and art 
must lie down together, and joy must 
lead them. 


Minimum Requirements—{T hat an editorial style 
should be simple, forceful, sparkling, clear, or, as occa- 
sion requires, trenchant, incisive, audacious, smooth, 
and have the commonplace rhetorical virtues, goes 
without saying.) These are the minimum requirements. 
Their employment changes as the form of discourse— 
narration, description, exposition, argument, persua- 
sion—changes, and as the subject changes. Without 
possession of these elementary qualities, writing is 
almost certain to be futile. 

“In the matter of diction, the editor is not a purist. 
He never uses words for words’ sake. They are mere- 
ly his tools, his means to an end. $The opening of an 
editorial from the New York Sun aptly and cleverly 


states the case: 
| BUT 


The Mad Mullah and Hell-Roaring 
Bill and all the other halcyon and vo- 
ciferous supernumeraries march across 
the stage in vain. They cannot distract 
the mind of the friend and preserver 
of the English language from his sa- 
cred duty and pleasure. As little wan- 
ton boys are sometimes set to ring a 
bell to keep the birds from the cherry 
tree, so these august janitors of the 
tongue that Shakespeare spoke dis- 
charge their culverins and basilisks at 
any wretched, rash, intruding fool of 


143 


THE EDITORIAL 


a word or construction that likes them 
not. What good man does not vener- 
ate’ their industry and their zeal? 
Knowing that they are watching on the 
tower, the rest of us can pull our red- 
cotton night caps over our noddles and 
lie down to pleasant dreams. We are 
no heroic language savers, no indom- 
itable Puritans of the parts of speech. 
Let us be glad that there are sterner 
and more self-sacrificing spirits. 


Imagination Plays Useful Part-/An important 
quality of editorial style is concreteness. This intro- 
duces the pictorial element.) “It was a fine and deep 
saying of Aristotle that the greatest thing by far is 
to be master of metaphor. This is the mark of genius, 
for, said he, it implies an intuitive perception of simi- 
larity in dissimilars. All the great thinkers have been 
masters of metaphor because all vivid thinking must 
be in images and the philosopher whose metaphors 
are blurred and diluted is one whose thinking is blurred 
and diluted.” 

To some writers, setting forth thoughts in picture 
or metaphor is an accomplishment requiring no effort. 
Others are able to do it only by painstaking search 
for suitable figures. (The pictorial quality lends vivid- 
ness to the editorial and, though an apt metaphor may 
be as hard to find as a difficult rime, it is worth all 
the effort it costs} “Often there is a pictorial quality 
in the English leader,’ says Charles H. Grasty, “that 
makes the points more easily understood. I recall a 
single sentence in the Morning Post's editorial on the 
Asquith Cabinet just before it came to grief: “Asquith 


144 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


folds his hands; Sir Edward Grey wrings his hands; 
and all the rest rub their hands.’ A column of fine 
writing would not have driven the point home so well 
at that particular moment.” 

An interesting illustration of the advantages in 
visual thinking is afforded by the extensive use made 
of visualization in the most successful methods of im- 
proving the memory. 

The fact that the faculty of concreteness in express- 
ing ideas appears as a natural endowment in the case, 
for example, of a wonderful user of pictures like 
Lincoln, does not justify any writer in assuming that, 
since this manner of expression has not been thrust 
upon him, it cannot be cultivated. In almost every 
case, special excellencies of style have been acquired 
by conscious effort. For example, one of the most 
brilliant of American writers, as well as orators, John 
J. Ingalls, acquired his mastery over words partly by 
the habit of devoting leisure moments on the train or 
elsewhere to the “game,” as he called it, of reading 
a sentence from some book or magazine and then en- 
deavoring to improve it by changing its structure and 
substituting strong and vivid words for weak and 
colorless ones. 

What could be more picturesque than the exagger- 
ated use of metaphor in the following from the Em- 
poria (Kansas) Gazette: 


JONAHS 


The Democratic party is four miles 
from home with its pants on a clothes 
line. It has neither leaders nor princi- 


145 


THE EDITORIAL 


ples, it is without pride in its past, and 
has no hope of immortality. Take Wil- 
son from it and it 1s a liability. Load 
Wilson on to it and st is a-wreck. 

The Republican party sometimes looks 
like chaos agitated with an egg beater; 
but the Democratic party looks like the 
hole in the little end of nothing bub- 
bling into a nightmare! 

So that’s why we are lining up with 
the Republican party. And also it’s in 
a condition where one Jonah more or 
less won’t hurt it. 


Or this from the same paper: 


ADVICE TO GINGER JAG 


He was a_gangling, loose-boned, 
limber-jawed youth who looked as 
though he had been sent for and could 
not get away. He blew into the Ga- 
gette office to-day to have his name 
kept out of the paper for being on a 
jag. He expected to get a job on the 
Santa Fé, and would not be employed 
if his name appeared in the Gazette, 
and as this was his first offense we kept 
his name out. But by way of diver- 
sion we hereby hand him the follow- 
ing hard-boiled language: 

“You are a damned fool, Mr. Ginger 
Jag. And we use the words damned 
and fool advisedly. Any man who 
hasn’t enough sense to keep Jamaica 
ginger out of his stomach as a bever- 
age, won't have sense enough to func- 
tion in this world; he is damned from 
here to eternity. And any man who 
deliberately sets out to get drunk when 
there is nothing but Jamaica ginger 
and lemon extract to cheer him, is a 
fool. There might have been some 
sense in the head of the man who, un- 
der the stimulus of social encourage- 


146 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


ment, a gang of other cheerful idiots, 
and a larruping good brand of booze, in 
a gay and festive livery stable or other 
bacchanalian retreat filled his system 
full of assault, arson, larceny, and man- 
slaughter microbes, which ‘would stea! | 
upon him unaware. But for a man to 
go out with malice prepense and stoke 
up on a lot of lemon extract or Ja- 
maica ginger, which in itself is a poi- 
son, and then go and steal a motor car 
and ride off and try to climb a tree 
with it—that man is a fool; a damned 
fool, and what’s more. unless some. 
woman or God Almighty pertorms a 
miracle on him, he will be at it again. 
The next time we propose to print his 
name and mail a marked copy to the 
superintendent of the Santa Fé. The 
sooner he is fired, the safer traveling 
on the system will be, and we have no 
desire to shield a man in a job who 
is such a calf-bound chump that he gets 
drunk on groceries and hardware in- 
stead of regulation drugs. So, Mr. 
Ginger Jag, go to it while you’re young, 
for you haven’t got enough in your 
bean to last another year. And when 
you fail, blame yourself. The city of 
Emporia has protected you by city ordi- 
nance; the State of Kansas has shielded 
you from temptation by state law; and 
the constitution of the United States 
has been amended at a great expense 
for just such suckers as you, and if 
after all that pains to make a man of 
you, you haven’t got anything in your 
head but sweetbreads, you are not worth 
saving. So keep your eye on the junk- 
pile, and pick out your landing. For 
youre due there in about six months. 


= 


Where Memory Counts.-fA nother feature of style 
which does not come of its own accord, is the em- 


147 


THE EDITORIAL | 


ployment of literary and historical allusions. They 
enrich and adorn an editorial. To be sure, their effect 
is decidedly bad if it appears that they are not used 
to help the thought, but are merely lugged in to dis- 
play the writer’s attainments. 

Extract the allusions from the following eas tts: 
in the New York Evening Post and there is very little 
left—except the pleasing “twist” at the close: 


It is time that some one compiled a 
“Who’s Who in Fowls.” The swan 
that accompanied Leda has been made 
forever famous. The one that fur- 
nished transportation to Wagner’s 
Lohengrin has likewise achieved im- 
mortality. The black swan on the 
Rousseau Island at Geneva attracted 
thousands of visitors long before the 
League of Nations ever thought of es- 
tablishing its headquarters at that city. 
Ducks have made Long Island famous. 
In her “The Lover’ Lady Montagu 
says: “And we meet with champagne 
and a chicken at last.” Whereupon 
Lord Byron exclaimed to Bowles: 
“What say you to such a supper with 
such a’ woman?” The rooster is the 
emblem of a political party. And now 
comes the President presenting no fewer 
than four roosters to a delegation of 
serious-minded gentlemen from _ the 
South. They (the roosters) are to be 
auctioned off at the classic town of 
Demopolis, Ala., and the funds are to 
go for the building of a bridge across 
the Tombigbee. It is to be hoped that 
the $200,000 to be raised on this oc- 
casion has no connection with the 
President’s admirable idea that the price 
of food must come down 


148 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


This is from the Christian Science Monitor. There 
is noteworthy vividness in the allusion, “with the scorp- 
ions of Rehoboam” : 


THE HUMANITIES 


The great barrier to human progress 
is obviously ignorance. That is why 
Diogenes insisted, centuries ago, that 
education was the very foundation of 
the Greek State. Any thinking person 
can see that this must be the case. Ig- 
norance breeds superstition, and super- 
stition rules men with the scorpions of 
Rehoboam. In the dawn of history, 
men divided their worship between the 
good deities and the bad. Rapidly it 
became obvious to them that the propi- 
tiation of the malicious deity, intent 
upon hurting them, was more to be 
sought than the favor of the kindly 
deity, amiable in his well-meaning. | 
That was the fruit of the tree of knowl- 
edge of good and evil. What the 
monotheism of Israel, in its earlier 
stages, did for mankind was to destroy 
the ignorant belief in Baal and Dagon, 
and in Leviathan and Behemoth, by 
teaching it that one God meant the ac- 
knowledgment of Principle. 


How difficult it would be to handle the subject of 
the following from the Philadelphia Public Ledger 
without putting it into the literary atmosphere by skill- 
ful allusions: 


BERRIES INATHEIRS GLORY! 


The most famous saying about a 
berry is undoubtedly that which appears 
in Walton’s “Angler” in this form: 
“We may say of angling as Doctor 


149 


THE EDITORIAL 


Boteler said of strawberries: ‘Doubt- 
less God might have made a better 
berry, but doubtless God never did.’” 
Roger Williams in his “Key Into the 
Language of America” says: “One of 
the chiefest doctors of England was 
wont to say that God could have made, 
but God never did make, a_ better 
berry.” The doctor quoted is William 
Butler, who figures in Fuller’s “Worth- 
ies” as the “A‘sculapius of our age.” 

Many are enamored of the strawberry 
who find unhappily that “the glory of 
the garden” does not agree with them. 
This perennial herb of the family of 
the Rosacez is an all-American plant, 
for it will grow almost anywhere be- 
tween Florida and Alaska. The “old 
homestead” of the plant was in Massa- 
chusetts, where in 1834 the Hovey 
strawberry flourished. 


The idea in the following editorial from the Chicago 
Tribune can be fully expressed in three lines, but by 
means of imaginative handling its effectiveness is in- 
creased tenfold: 


WE VIEW WITH PRIDE | 


“Are we entering our Augustan pe- 
riod? The Tribune does not say we 
are. It merely inquires. Will any 
president of the United States ever 
again be content to be merely president 
of the United States? 

After Caius Julius Caesar Octavianus 
what? 

Will the parochial limits of the 
United States ever content the boy in 
breeches who, destined to lead, is spec- 
ulating whether he ever could be presi- ‘ 
dent? President of what? Of these 
United States with their limited bounda- 


150 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


ries? Or a president of Pichon i 
President of the world? 

There is a thought for the fond 
American mother to consider as she 
watches her yellow-haired boy at prayer 
at her knees. He may be president of 
the world, with a mandate in Armenia 
and one in Ireland, with a mandate in 
China and one in Russia, with mandates 
everywhere and no horizon except the 
ether. 

Somewhere in the period of the glory 
of our spreading purple there may arise 
a Diocletian who may turn sour on the 
world and all its mandates and want 
merely to go home to Dalmatia, mind 
his own business, and raise cabbages, 
but what a glory in the spreading purple 
before he comes. And he will not 
establish a precedent but merely express 
a personal distaste for so large a thing 
as the world. 


When Blood Must Be Drawn.—Sharp weapons lie 
ready to the editor’s hand, but must be used with cau- 
tion in remembrance of what happens to him who 
takes the sword. 

John Fiske, one of the most persuasive of writers, 
had this to say of the most effective way to argue 
people out of wrong views and into right ones: “Not 
by wounding prejudices is the cause of truth most 
efficiently served. Men do not give up false or inade- 
quate beliefs by hearing them scoffed at or harshly 
criticized. They give them up only when they have 
been taught truths with which the false or inadequate 
beliefs are incompatible.” 

Nevertheless, as Mr. Fiske himself demonstrated on 
occasion, if a.sword must be used, it should not be 

I51 


THE EDITORIAL 


handled like a feather duster. Some of the keen-edged 
instruments of style are: 

1. Innuendo.—Perhaps the most subtle of all. Of 
questionable value because it is likely to escape many 
readers, and because a large proportion of those who 
do appreciate may resent it through a natural dislike 
for hints and covert suggestions. Nevertheless few 
hard fought political campaigns are free from in- 
nuendos aimed at the opposition by editorial writers. 
Insinuations of corruption in public affairs, sly hints 
at private immoralities, implications of bad motives— 
all uttered, as it were, in whispers or with an appear- 
ance of the most innocent intentions—disfigure edi- 
torial pages when political controversy grows warm. 
One of the least objectionable, and yet effective, forms 
of innuendo is the printing of a fable of A¢sop, or 
other selection, which applies to a local situation. Read- 
ers enjoy its aptness. 

2. Satire—Effective especially in throwing light 
on the evils or weaknesses in institutions, conventions, 
or customs. Injects spice into style, and when the 
subject warrants its use, is an excellent means of in- 
creasing the readability of an editorial. 

When actors in New York went on a strike to force 
concessions from managers, the Times assumed a tone 
of not unkindly satire in the following editorial. 


ACTING ON THE SIDEWALK 


Loyal members of the Actors’ Equity 
Association should not permit their in- 
stincts as comedians to get the better 
of their plain duty as strikers. Pooh- 


152 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


Bah is one of the fattest parts known 
to the stage, but it should be confined 
to the stage. It does not speed the great 
cause when two actors, who happen to 
be also managers, appear on the side- 
walk and confide to the populace the 
extreme embarrassment which they 
would suffer in both capacities if they 
permitted themselves as actors to break 
their contracts with themselves as man- 
agers. Again when an able and aerial 
funmaker diverts the public at the foot 
of the elevator by his protests of un- 
dying fealty to the cause of Equity, and 
then ascends the lift to resume his place 
on the stage above, he must expect his 
triumphant manager to bill him hence- 
forth as Edward Recantor. Sabotage 
may have its place in the program of 
the workingman, but few will take seri- 
ously the threat of a leading lady to 
ruin the productions in which she ap- 
pears by secretly neglecting to powder 
her nose. Such tactics may temporarily 
induce the public to prefer the perform- 
ances on the sidewalk to those within; 
but the dictatorship of the proletariat 
iS a serious cause or it is nothing. 
There is the question, furthermore, of 
casualties among innocent bystanders. 
Already it is reported that one unsus- 
pecting citizen, exercising his undoubted 
right to walk by a theater entrance, 
exploded with laughter. Things have 
come to an intolerable pass when it is 
)not safe for inhabitants of this metrop- 
olis either to ride or to walk. To the 
discerning observer the strategy of the 
Equity Association is obvious. Team- 
play is the strikers’ watchword. But let 
the actors remember that the Devil Dogs 
of the regular army have returned. If 
matters are allowed to come to a crisis, 
it will be their stern and solemn duty to 
suppress this riot of jocularity. Oliver 
Wendell Holmes was a wise man no less 


153 


THE EDITORIAL 


than a witty one. As strikers, certainly, 
our Thespians will do well to heed his 
precept and never dare to be as funny 
as they can. 

One element in the populace, and by 
no means an inconsiderable element, has 
thus far succeeded in taking the crisis 
seriously. The chorus girls are forming 
a union which is to petition humbly for 
affliation with the Equity Association, 
under the American Federation of 
Labor. Even if the strike continues to 
grow, it is manifestly impossible that 
they should all receive speaking parts, 
so the accession of strength to the 
strikers may be considerable. We should 
be loath to take sides in the great con- 
flict; but from the point of view of the 
most detached and philosophic observer 
it is obvious that the strongest fortress 
of the striker is the absence, or at least 
the temporary abeyance, of the sense of 
humor. 


A bit of ironical satire from the Cleveland Press: 


100 PER CENT FREEDOM 


An increase of 100 per cent in, the 
cost of men’s clothing is coming. Kick? 
No, sir! We kick on 100 per cent rise 
in bacon, butter, eggs and other marvels 
that go into us, but not on this rise in 
costs of clothes, because the designers 
provide a compensation for the lovely 
hold-up. “Gaudy things in Alice blue, 
orange and similar brilliant hues will be } 
the vogue,” to quote the designers. 

What care we for 100 per cent, when 
we can waft ourself down to the office 
in orange coat, vest of Alice blue and 
sunflower trousers? The whole range 
of “brilliant hues” will be open to us, 
and we'll lay our 100 per cent on the 
altar without a sniffle or complaint. 


154 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


Doggone it! The confinement to | 
somber hues has been a thorn in our 
side all our life. Years we have worn 
the aspect of the smoky bat, while 
mother, sister and daughter have scin- 
tillated with hues. No more the “tone” 
of the lowly burro. The vain butterfly 
shall dodge our trousers swinging on the 
family clothes line and the conceited 
rainbow shall weep floods of envy in 
the presence of our resplendent vest. 

Cost? Is there any price too high 
to pay for freedom from female criti- 
cism of our “color tone”? And you can 
bet that the females won’t criticize, if 
were only in vogue, whatever our 
“tone.” 


3. Irony.—A highly distinctive form, easy to em- 
ploy because it involves little more than inverting state- 
ments so that they say the opposite of what they mean. 
This two-edged weapon should be chosen with reluct- 
ance. Irony seems to carry with it a sneer, and it is 
difficult, in such a case, 0 be sure of the sympathy of 
the readers. 

The Kansas City Star grows ironical at the attitude 
of some of the citizens of that town. Perhaps the 
effect was salutary. 


“HURTING THE TOWN.” 


Isn’t it about time an understanding 
should be reached as to what really 
“hurts the town”? 

* * * * * 

The extreme solicitude of certain men 
for the welfare of Kansas City is, in- 
deed, beautiful to behold. They are 
ready to forgive public service corpora- 
tions any sin of omission or commission 


155 


THE EDITORIAL 


so long as they manage to keep up ap- 
pearances and keep going. It would 
never do to let bondholders or stock- 
holders lose anything by a showdown, 
because that would attract attention and 
“hurt the town.” 

It wouldn’t hurt the town, of course, 
for Kansas City to have the highest 
street railway fare of any city in the 
country. 

2 * ** 2 * 

It doesn’t hurt the town to have the 
transportation system of the city so 
mismanaged that its service often is an 
outrage on the community and an as- 
tonishment to the stranger within the 
gates. 

It doesn’t hurt the town when the 
street railway company spends its rev- 
enues to put over one-sided franchises 
and to finance costly reorganizations and 
then fails to live up to the terms of 
contracts thus procured, on the ground 
that the management cannot make ends 
meet. 

Certainly not. These things are good 
and wholesome for the city and the] 
people who must use the street cars, 
and, of course, they constitute the best 
possible advertisement at a time when 
competition among rival cities is par- 
ticularly keen. 


The Emporia Gazette indulges its skepticism in iron- 
ical vein thus: 


A MOLLOW HOCKERY 


‘Three investigations have started in 
Chicago to fix the blame for the blimp 
disaster. Fine business! 

Those who remember how many guilty 
men were hanged for the Iriquois fire 
will quiver with terror at the outcome 


156 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


of these three investigations. And the 
same huzzahs of approval that greeted 
the hanging of the men responsible for 
the Eastland drowning will rise when 
the ruthless arm of the Chicago law 
grips the blimp gang by the throat. 
Three separate investigations, city, state 
and federal, always are required in Chi- 
cago to save the face of the town. 

What a Chinese village it is—that 
Chicago! 


4. Sarcasm.—Coarser and more brutal than satire 
or irony, sarcasm is the weapon too frequently chosen 
by the inexperienced. Its derivative meaning, tearing 
the flesh, expresses well its characteristics. As com- 
pared with the poisoned dart of innuendo, the rapier of 
satire, the double-edged sword of irony, sarcasm is the 
broad ax. Its indiscriminate use is more likely to 
create sympathy for the person attacked than other- 
wise. 

Considering the objects of the following sarcastic 
remarks in the Cleveland Press, there is probably no 
danger of boomerang effects: 


ON SOLID GROUND 


An honest profiteer is the strangest 
work of God. 

Come now some shoe manufacturers 
with the declaration that prices of foot- 
wear are going to rise and that high 
prices are “due to depletion of stocks, 
the prosperity of the country, and Euro- 
pean buying.” 

The people have the prosperity, so 
soak ’em! Isn’t it refreshing in these 
dubious times of commercial hypocrisy, 
to hear one gang come right out and 


157 


THE EDITORIAL 


declare that they’re going to gouge be- 
cause the gouging is good? 

Of course, there may be some deple- 
tion of stocks and Europe may be buy- 
ing, but how puerile such excuses when 
there is ready to hand the magnificent 
ground for a hold-up in the fact that 
Mr. Common Victim still has money 
in his pocket! Forsooth, you don’t hear 
of burglars breaking into poorhouses, or 
highwaymen holding up tramps, do you? 
Certainly not. 

Always put your pistol at the head 
of prosperous folks. Those boot and 
shoe fellows are to be thanked for peel- 
ing the camouflage off the going busi- 
ness process. 


5. Ridicule—Nothing but the wheel of torture ade- 
quately represents this form of writing or speaking. 
The normal human being can endure almost anything 
easier than to be made ridiculous. Here, again, the 
editorial writer, even though he is sure that the object 
of his attack deserves such treatment, will employ 
ridicule with care knowing that its general effect is 
liable to be the opposite of what he desires. Particu- 
larly will he avoid this tone in referring to anything 
which men or women anywhere hold sacred. This 
from the New York Sun: 


IT WILL NOT WORK 


Here is an impudent young fellow 
who thinks to make use of the Sun to 
proclaim his false pretenses and secure 
his discreditable object: 

“T am a young* man, good looking, 
have an income of three thousand a 
year. I would like a wife. She must bea 


158 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


good housekeeper and a loving wife; 
must be good looking and respectable, 
and an American girl. 

“P. S.—Answer in person or by letter. 

“Put this in a conspicuous place.” 

Yes, young man, we will put it in a 
conspicuous place, and we would publish 
your name and address also, as you 
expected us to do, if it were not that 
we would thus assist you in your miser- 
able game. 

An income of $3,000 a year! You are 
lucky if you have $300 a year; but even 
your small pecuniary resources must be 
large enough to enable you to get the 
schooling you need. Your handwriting 
is the handwriting of a boy of twelve, 
and the best thing you can do is to 
improve your leisure by going to some 
evening school, instead of loafing around 
beer saloons and street corners, as you 
probably do. There you will learn 
something of value to you, and, if you 
are as smart as you think you are, at 
some future time, perhaps, you may get 
the income which you falsely pretend 
you now have. Then, when you deserve 
a good wife, you will have no difficulty 
in getting one, for girls who satisfy the 
conditions you lay down are plenty. In 
Brooklyn, where you live, there are 
many thousands of them, but they are 
not to be caught by such a cheap trick 
as that you thought to play on us. No 
girl of any sense pays the least atten- 
tion to an advertisement like yours, 
1to which you were impudent enough to 
suppose that you could humbug us into 
giving free and prominent publication. 

We are sorry to say that you are a 
specimen of a great lot of young fel- 
lows in all large towns, who are a 
constant cause of anxiety to their 
parents because of their general worth- 
lessness, and a source of danger and 
annoyance to decent girls because of 


159 


THE EDITORIAL 


their lack of principle. Doubtless your 
wife would need to be a good house- 
keeper, provident and self-denying, for 
she would probably have to keep you. 
The more loving she was the worse it 
would be for her, since you would im- 
pose on her affectionate fidelity. 

Such is our answer to your impudent 
letter, young man. 

6. Invective—In a series like the foregoing, pro- 
ceeding from the most subtle to the least so, vitupera- 
tion stands last. It is direct, undisguised abuse. The 
only reason for mentioning it here is to state the 
opinion that no editorial writer ever gains anything 
by using it. It is sure to disgust readers. They are 
not equipped with mud guards. 

The days of editorial wars have practically passed. 
Any American editor of the past who might return 
to metropolitan journalism to-day and introduce into 
his columns the sort of personal abuse which he was 
accustomed to deal out in the “good old days” would 
speedily become an object of pity and contempt. Only 
in country journalism, where a few of the old type of 
dog-fight editors still flourish, could he find refuge; 
and the day is not far when he would find no place 
at all in the journalism of this country. Such person- 
alities as the following, directed by Webb, of the Cou- 
rier and Enquirer, at Greeley of the Tribune, were 
common in the last century: 


The editor of the Tribune would have 
all the world live upon branbread and 
sawdust. He seeks for notoriety by 
pretending to great eccentricity of char- 
acter and habits, and by the strangeness 


160 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


of his theories and practices; we, on the 
contrary, are content with following the 
beaten path, and accomplishing the good 
we can, in the old-fashioned way. He 
lays claim to greatness by wandering 
through the streets with a hat double 
the size of his head, a coat after the 
fashion of Jacob’s of old, with one leg 
of his pantaloons inside and the other 
outside of his boot, and with boots all 
bespattered with mud, or possibly a 
shoe on one foot and boot on the other, 
and glorying in an unwashed and un- 
shaven person. 


To which Greeley replied: 


It is true that the Editor of the 
Tribune chooses mainly (not entirely) 
vegetable food; but he never troubles 
his readers on the subject; it does not 
worry them; why should it concern the 
Colonel? It is hard for philosophy that 
so humble a man shall be made to stand 
as its exemplar, while Christianity is 
personified by the hero of the Sunday 
duel with Hon. Tom Marshall; but such 
luck will happen. As to our personal 
appearance, it does seem time that we 
should say something. Some donkey, a 
while ago, apparently anxious to Bea 
or annoy the Editor of this paper, and 
not well knowing with what, originated 
the story of his carelessness of personal 
appearance; and since then, every block- 
head of the same disposition, and dis- 
tressed by a similar lack of ideas, has 
repeated and exaggerated the folly, un- 
til, from its origin in the Albany Micro- 
scope, it has sunk down at last to the 
columns of the Courier and Enquirer, 
growing more absurd at every landing. 
Yet, all this time, the object of this silly 
raillery has doubtless worn better clothes 
than two-thirds of those who assailed 
him—better than any of them -could 


161 


THE EDITORIAL 


honestly wear if they paid their debts 
otherwise than by bankruptcy; while, if 
they are indeed more cleanly than he, 
they must bathe very thoroughly not 
less than twice every day. The Editor 
of the Tribune is the son of a poor and 
humble farmer; came to New York a 
minor, without a friend within two 
hundred miles, less than ten dollars in 
his pocket, and precious little besides; 
he has never had a dollar from a rela- 
tive, and has, for years, labored under 
a load of debt. Henceforth he may be 
able to make a better show, if deemed 
essential by his friends; for himself he 
has not much time or thought to bestow 
on the matter. That he ever affected 
| eccentricity is most untrue; and cer- 
tainly no costume he ever appeared in, 
would create such a sensation in Broad- 
way, as that James Watson Webb would 
have worn, but for the clemency of Gov. 
Seward. Heaven grant our assailant 
may never hang with such weight on 
another Whig executive !—We drop him. 


Or Greeley’s retort to Bryant, “You lie, villain! 
Willfully, wickedly, basely lie!’ And his description 
of Bennett as a “low mouthed, blatant, witless scoun- 
drel.” 

The wise editor knows, perhaps through experience, 
that when he is attacked it is neither fair to himself 
nor his readers to start a “war.” He either ignores the 
onslaught or meets it in the spirit of the following 
from the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette: 


“BADLY OVERESTIMATED” 


A heart-searching young gentleman 
correspondent for a Stafford County 
paper from Topeka, writes to his home 
paper that the editor of the Gazette is 


162 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


“badly overestimated.” Perhaps that 
may be in Topeka and in Stafford 
County, but here in Lyon County, in 
Emporia, and in the Fourth Ward in 
particular, they have the person in ques- 
tion cut down to an equitable basis, with 
all the water, air and fizz squeezed out. 
As a result he gets the everlasting 
daylights kicked out of him in about 
three primaries out of five, and is used 
for a door-mat, whenever the fellows 
feel that they should clean their feet. 
A favorite game up in the ward is to 
put the head of the editor of this great 
home favorite through a hole in a 
blanket and offer a prize for the fellow 
who can hit it the most times in a 
county convention—“every time you hit 
the baby you get a fine cigar.” And 
there is always a scramble for a throw. 

The, young gentleman from Stafford 
may have the truth about the estimation 
of the Gazette’s editor in Topeka and 
Stafford and other remote parts of the 
solar system, but here in Emporia they 
know the facts; what is more, there is 
an interesting family in the northeast 
end of the Fourth ward that also knows 
the facts—the cold, clammy, uncomfort- 
able facts, and there are times when the 
said family hereinbefore described and 
above-mentioned does not hesitate to let 
in the light, and a certain pussy little 
man with the buff showing through the 
top of his hair, is rudely and coldly 
exposed to the withering truth; at such 
times the kink comes out of his back- 
bone, the bulge out of his breast, the 
starch melts out of his knees, and before 
the shrinking is done he has to tiptoe 
to look over his shoetops into a hard, 
disenchanted world. 

If the Stafford county journalist will 
come to Emporia he can learn some- 
thing to his advantage about this over- 
estimation business. 


163 


THE EDITORIAL 


William Allen White, the writer of the foregoing, 
has a theory that in a political contest it is often the 
duty of the editor to draw the fire of the opposition to 
himself in order to protect his candidates. ‘“Punish- 
ment” is apparently this editor’s meat and drink. 

Comment on the use of too strong a word in an 
editorial was made in several newspapers following the 
decision in the libel suit of Henry Ford against the 
Chicago Tribune. (The Tribune called Mr. Ford an 
anarchist. Mr. Ford sued the Tribune for libel, asking 
one million dollars damages. The jury found the 
paper guilty of libel and awarded the plaintiff six 
cents.) The following is from an editorial in the 
Topeka Capital: 


“Newspapers,” says the New York 
Evening Post, “sometimes fall into un- 
intended or inadvertent libels. But this 
excuse was not pleaded by the Chicago 
Tribune. Its attack on Henry Ford was 
deliberate and studied. It knew per- 
fectly the risk it was taking. Now it 
has had a rather costly education in the 
danger of throwing libelous epithets, 
instead of reasons, at a private citizen.” 

That is the actual significance of the 
case. More and more newspapers have 
come to learn that no matter how zeal- 
ous their belief in any disputed matter, 
they gain nothing by arguing with hard 
words and bad temper instead of rea- 
son. Calling people names is a practice 
that most newspapers have outgrown. 
If they can not convince or influence 
public opinion by reason, they can not 
hope to do so by appl).7¢ epithets to 
those with whom they do not agree. 
Every newspaper editor receives letters, 
usually anonymous, applying every sort 


164 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


of epithet to him and his opinions, but 
the effect of this common experience 
is to convince him of the uselessness fcr 
any purpose of merely “calling names.” 
The Tribune in its zeal denounced 
Henry Ford as an anarchist and implied 
at least that he is an enemy of the 
government and country. It would have 
got further by replying to his arguments 
and showing up the fallaciousness of his 
views. 


Once in a while, however, is an instance in which an 
editor feels, justly, that heroic remedies must be ap- 
plied. Such was the case when William Allen White, 
in 1896, wrote an editorial that was notable in political 
history, on “What’s the Matter with Kansas?’ This 
editorial in the Emporia Gazette, after pointing out 
that for several years Kansas had been losing in popu- 
lation, wealth and reputation abroad, undertook to 
explain why. The following are characteristic para- 
graphs full of epithets and irony: 


What’s the matter with Kansas? 

We all know; yet here we are at it 
again. We have an old mossback Jack- 
sonian who snorts and howls because 
there is a bath tub in the statehouse; 
we are running that old jay for gover- 
nor. We have another shabby, wild- 
eyed, rattlebrained fanatic who has said 
openly in a dozen speeches that “the 
rights of the user are paramount to the 
rights of the owner’; we are running 
him for chief justice, so that capital 
will come tumbling over itself to get 
into the state. We have raked the old 
ash heap of failure in the state and 
found an old human hoopskirt who has 
failed as an editor, who has failed as a 
teacher, and we are going to run him 


165 


THE EDITORIAL 


for congressman-at-large. He will help 
the looks of the Kansas delegation at 
Washington. Then we have discovered 
a kid without a law practice and have 
decided to run him for attorney general. 
Then, for fear some hint that the state 
had become respectable might percolate 
through the civilized portions of the 
nation, we have decided to send three 
or four harpies out lecturing, telling the 
people that Kansas is raising hell and 
letting the corn go to weeds. 

Oh, this is a state to be proud of! 
We are a people who can hold up our 
heads! What we need here is less cap- 
ital, fewer white shirts and brains, fewer 
men with business judgment, and more 
of those fellows who boast that they 
are “just ordinary clodhoppers,” but 
they know more in a minute about 
finance than John Sherman; we need 
more men who are “posted,’ who can 
bellow about the crime of ’73, who hate 
prosperity, and who think because a 
man believes in national honor, he is a 
tool of Wall Street. We have had a 
few of them, some 150,000—but we need 
more. We need several thousand gib- 
bering idiots to scream about the “Great 
Red Dragon” of Lombard Street. We 
don’t need population, we don’t need 
wealth, we don’t need standing in the 
nation, we don’t need cities on the fer- 
tile prairies; you bet we don’t! What 
we are after is the money power. Be- 
cause we have become poorer and or- 
nerier and meaner than a spavined, dis- 
tempered mule, we, the people of Kan- 
sas, promise to kick; we don’t care to 
build up, we wish to tear down. 


Many war editorials were naturally of a denuncia- 
tory type. One entitled “Deadly Danger,” written by 
Elmer T. Peterson of the Wichita Beacon, was chosen 

166 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


66 


as the “gold medal editorial” in a contest conducted ‘ 
in 1918 by the trade paper, Editor and Publisher. 

Another Powerful Element.—Entirely unlike the 
foregoing six sharp weapons of attack, except that it 
is a special form adapted to attaining certain particu- 
lar ends, is pathos. Like humor—which is sufficiently 
discussed elsewhere in speaking of the entertainment 
type of editorial and in the chapter on paragraphers— 
it lends a characteristic tone to the editorial and is an, 
element that no well-balanced editorial *page will lack. 

The following from the Kansas City Star is an ex- 
ample of this “human interest” variety of the interpre- 
tive editorial: 


ONLY A DOG 


GreELEY, Coto.—Despairing of ever 
again seeing their little house dog, which 
had been missing for several days, Mr. 
and Mrs. J. E. Bowers drove out to 
Linn Grove Cemetery to place flowers 
on the grave of their baby, who died a 
few months ago. There on the tiny 
mound they found the dog asleep and 
almost exhausted from grief and hunger. 

° —News Dispatch. 

Yet it was “only a dog” keeping the 
love vigil under the stars in Linn Grove 
Cemetery. 

The Bowers family, no doubt, had 
been criticized for keeping it around 
the house. Indignant highbrows, quite 
possibly, had written letters to the Gree- 
ley papers to protest that there were 
“too many worthless curs in this town.” 
There was nothing inviting about it, 

| perhaps, to look at. It barked at the 
milkman and made life a burden for 
the iceman. Occasionally it chased the 


167 


THE EDITORIAL 


neighbor’s cat up a tree, and when it | 
found nobody to annoy, and the baby 
was asleep, it amused itself by scratch- 
ing its ears—in public. Members of the 
women’s clubs wondered “what the 
Bowers family meant” by lavishing af- 
fection on such a dog. 

But the Bowers baby and the Bowers 
dog didn’t mind what the highbrows 
said or what the club women thought. 
They rolled on the floor together, and 
the baby roughed the dog’s wool, pulled 
its ears and twisted its tail. If the ice- 
man or the milkman had tried that 
familiarity there would have been trou- 
ble. But the iceman and the milkman 
and the club women and the highbrows, 
who hate dogs, couldn’t understand the 
loyalty that bound the Bowers dog to 
the Bowers baby. It was “only a dog” 
to them. 

And when the Bowers baby died there 
was sympathy for all the family. 
Neighbors called to offer condolence 
and to do all they could to heal the 
sorely wounded hearts. Nobody, how- 
ever, thought of the baby’s playfellow, 
the Bowers dog. No one gave a thought 
to him as he wandered through the 
house alone looking for the companion 
that had roughed his wool and pulled 
his ears; listening for the voice that 
had commanded him to obedience, even 
though it had talked in baby prattle. 
No one paid attention to the wistful, 
wondering look in the eyes of the 
Bowers dog as he went from one to 
another, seeking in dumb, dog-fashion, 
an explanation of the mystery of mys- 
teries that had robbed him of his play- 
mate. He was only a dog. 

When the Bowers baby was taken 
from the house by strange hands—they 
never would have touched the baby in 
other days, with the dog standing guard 
—and the silent, solemn procession left 


168 


\ THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


the Bowers home for that sad journey 
to Linn Grove Cemetery, nobody be- 
stowed so much as a look upon the 
Bowers dog. Why should they? He 
was only a dog. 

And the procession from Linn Grove 
Cemetery wended home again. The 
Bowers family and the relatives and 
the sympathizing friends and the min- 
ister. The little Bowers baby was left 
there in. a new made grave—but not 
alone. When the last human friend had 
left the little mound there came a watch- 
man to keep vigil, a watchman prompted 
by a love and loyalty that passes human 
ken. It was the Bowers dog. 

In his way the dog had solved the 
mystery. They found him there, three 
days later, exhausted, the dispatch reads, 
“from grief and hunger,” but faithful 
still, keeping watch over the dead. 

Let the scientists tell us that, being 
only a dog, he could not have been 
moved by a sense of affection—and let 
scientists go hang. 

For there is the Bowers dog. 


Editor Not an Autocrat.—A style which might be 
characterized as dictatorial will hardly enhance the 
influence of an editor. Few people enjoy being lec- 
tured by one who assumes that he is saying the last 
word on the subject. Few readers enjoy the implica- 
tion that if they do not agree with the editorial point 
of view, they are fools or crooks. Such an attitude 
may appeal to the writer himself as a most enjoyable 
luxury, but it is undoubtedly an expensive one. It is 
an indulgence of egotism. It is liable to beget bigotry 
and to dissipate any hope that an editorial writer will 
become anything more than a space filler. 

169 


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YOLINOW SJONHIOS NVILSIMHO AHL 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


Rather, the judicious editor will take care to afford 
his reader a sense of discovery. 

Applied too broadly, this practice in writing would 
make of the editor nothing but a mouthpiece for 
others. That is not the meaning of the principle. It 
goes no further than to recommend that the editor 
avoid exaltation of himself; that he choose phrase- 
ology which admits the reader as a participant in con- 
sidering the question in hand. A conclusion which 
the reader feels that he himself has formed is ten 
times as compelling as one handed to him ready-made. 
For instance, given the facts about a man, the reader 
will apply the right label; but if the editor applies the 
label, the reader instinctively questions his motive—~ 
the label does not stick. 

Avoid the Editorial ““We.”’—Perhaps here, refer- 
ence may be made in passing to the unfortunate prac- 
tice, now obsolescent, of using the personal “we” as 
a term of reference to the editor or the paper. It is 
artificial and ridiculous and has always been a man--: 
nerism inviting jeers. A very little ingenuity will 
enable any writer to avoid its use. The reader of edi- 
torials does not need to be told that the opinions are 
“ours.” It is preferable to introduce the name of 
the paper, if the need seems desperate. The only 
excuse for reference to the editor is to lend a touch 
of humor, as in some such expression as this, often 
found in smaller newspapers, “the editor of this moral 
guide and bearer of intelligence.” 

Deadening Effect of Commonplaceness.—The un- 
pardonable sin of style is the use of stereotyped ex- 


171 


THE EDITORIAL 


pressions and hackneyed words. The temptation to use 
them is too strong to be resisted by a lazy writer. They 
always lie conveniently at hand; but so far as actually 
carrying across to the reader any real meaning, they 
are futile. No reader’s interest can survive an attack 
with these deadening instruments. One is almost 
moved to say that the opposite extreme—the use of un- 
usual, even freakish, forms of expression—is pref- 
erable. 

True, great men are often guilty of commonplace- 
ness; but that need not recommend it to smaller men 
who lack the marvelous compensating qualities of the 
great. The following extract from an editorial in the 
New York Evening Post is an illuminating discussion 
of this aspect of style: 


“The greatest master of platitude since George Wash- 
ington.” This was the characterization of Grover Cleve- 
land, at the height of his fame, made by Abram S. Hewitt. 
But Mr. Hewitt did not live to see the maturing of Mr. 
Roosevelt’s greater genius in the use of the commonplace. 

* * x * * : * 

The men named might well furnish concrete illustrations 
to a teacher, or an essayist, pointing out the dangers, as 
well as the possibilities, of great success, in the use of 
ordinary routine thoughts and sentiments by public men. 

Mr. Cleveland’s ponderous style in the enforcement of 
the obvious was often mocked at by the light-minded. 
They made fun of his heavy-footed phrases, of his earnest 
insistence upon everyday virtues. But the effect was by 
no means ridiculous. Mr. Hewitt was half-envious and 
nearly all admiring when he called Cleveland a master of 

172 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


platitude. To make use of it so as to achieve great re- 
sults—ah! that is the art which is the despair of many 
aspiring politicians. 

Behind the common thoughts and undistinguished style 
of President Cleveland lay the weight of his rugged 
character. When he solemnly declared that public offi- 
cials should devote themselves diligently to the service of 
the country, people did not laugh, because they saw that 
he believed implicitly what he said and acted upon it 
himself, giving to his own duties an industry that was at 
times cruel and a determination that was iron. He could 
exhort his fellow citizens to practice the undisputed civic 
virtues because they saw the unusual man behind the 
usual words. 

With Roosevelt, the commonplace took on the air of 
extreme novelty. This was because he was able to im- 
part to it such energy and passion. He did not content 
himself with the bare statement that children ought to 
love their fathers and mothers. In his hands the obvious 
became a flaming sword. He would wave it vehemently 
above his head and defy the world to deny that crime 
ought to be punished and virtue rewarded. Such zest 
and joy did he put into his vigorous enunciations of what 
all sane men agree to be true, that he somehow appeared, 
even when uttering platitudes, as a great moral and politi- 
cal discoverer. His explosive and resounding phrases, 
the mighty thwacks which he laid on the backs of his 
imaginary mollycoddles and milksops, helped to keep the 
people attent to his thunderings of the commonplace. Mr. 
Roosevelt attained a skill and triumph in that sort of 
mastery of platitude which leave all his competitors and 
rivals nowhere. ... If, as the old writers contended, 
eloquence is a virtue in the sense that it requires virtues 


173 


THE EDITORIAL 


in the orator to make him eloquent, we may be sure that 
high mental talents and a rush of soul are necessary in 
the man who is to be successful as a public exhorter in 
the commonplace. 


Beware of Words.—One of the curses of the edi- 
torial page is a wordy style. Refinement of expres- 
sion, by which is meant that trimming, modifying, and 
shaping of the language to express delicate shades of 
thought, is not without its special merit; but the use 
of more words than necessary, and larger words than 
necessary—the spectacular juggling with words—con- 
flicts with the attainment of any serious editorial pur- 
pose. Many editorial writers—and by no means be- 
ginners only—need to go through their copy once sole- 
ly to cut out needless words and to substitute, where 
possible, words of smaller dimensions. 

Since quotations embodying criticism of two former 
Presidents have been introduced, an editorial from the 
New York Globe touching the subject of wordiness as 
practiced by President Wilson may be quoted: 


Posterity will judge President Wilson’s acts more 
leniently than some of his present-day critics do, and his 
words somewhat more severely. It is now impossible to 
ascertain just how the tradition started that Mr. Wilson 
has a beautiful literary style. Possibly the knowledge that 
he had been a college professor led many people to look 
for the literary quality in him, and to find it because they 
looked for it. He has a way, indeed, of leading his 
auditors into an Elysian field where the angularities of life 
are momentarily rounded off and hard realities diluted 


174 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


with phrases until they cease to trouble. But a careful 
reader of his speeches, escaping this illusion, will find in 
them an irritating evasion of the actual difficulties of the 
subjects, and this is achieved at the cost of the basic 
qualities of a good literary style. 

Good style is concise, and Mr. Wilson is never concise.’ 
Take a random passage from his address at President 
Poincaré’s dinner. “A new thing that has happened is 
that we have translated our common principles and our 
common purposes into a common plan.” Of this sentence 
the first eight words are unnecessary. Four others (let 
the reader choose for himself) could be omitted with ad- 
vantage. Take another sentence: “Sometimes the work 
of the conference has seemed to go very slowly indeed.” 
Here are two words which not only add to the length of 
the phrase, but actually weaken it. 

Good style is direct, and Mr. Wilson is too seldom 
direct. Thus he says of his associates upon the conference 
board: “We have been constantly in the presence of each 
other’s minds and motives and characters, and the com- 
radeships which are based upon that sort of knowledge 
are sure to be very much more intelligent not only, but 
to breed a much more intimate sympathy and compre- 
hension than could otherwise be created.” Even when 
allowance is made for the mistakes of a sleepy cable 
operator, this bulbous passage yields a scant juice of 
meaning. 

Platitudes are the copper coin of speech, but Mr. Wilson 
says: “Friendship is a very good thing. Intimacy is a 
_ very enlightening thing.” Insincerity robs even golden 
words of their charm, but Mr. Wilson tells his auditors, 
and through them an utterly incredulous America, that he 


175 


THE EDITORIAL 


“has seemed to see the profit” in the disagreements that 
lengthened the work of the conference and prolonged the 
sufferings of Europe. 

Mr. Wilson is tired and his Paris address was not the 
best he could do. But it is fair to say that the author of 
that address will live in history for other qualities than 
his literary craftsmanship. 


Condemnation of a wordy style must not be mis- 
understood as advocacy of a simple vocabulary. Long 
or unusual words are: often the most useful in saving 
many other words and in rendering the exact shade 
of meaning. To give the preference to simple words 
is, of course, excellent practice; but to write as casual- 
ly as one talks is not desirable; and the writer who 
lacks words to*embody thoughts is a pitiful object. 

The “Megaphone” Style.—The style characterized 
by short sentences and: short paragraphs, sometimes 
emphasized by typographical expedients such as the 
use of large type and wide columns, has been described 
by Professor F. N. Scott, of the University of Michi- 
gan, as the megaphone style. This term aptly sets forth 
its merit. When, by means of the voice, a man tries 
to deliver ideas to a great crowd, he uses the mega- 
phone and discards long and involved sentences. There 
are times when a similar style of writing has decided 
advantages. 

The following from the New York Evening Journal 
illustrates this vivid quality while at the same time 
setting forth one of the editor’s notions as to the 
function of the editorial column: 


170 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


{TO EDITORIAL WRITERS—ADOPT 
RUSKIN’S MAIN IDEA 


“His pen is rust, his bones are dust 
(or soon will be), his soul is with the 
saints, we trust.” 

Ruskin is to be buried in Westminster 
Abbey. It is a fine home for a dead 
man, with Chatham and his great son 
Pitt in one tomb, and the other great 
skeletons of a great race moldering 
side by side so neighborly. 

The death of a wolf means a meal 
for the other wolves. The death of a 
great man means a meal—mental in- 
stead of physical—for those left be- 
hind. Wolves feed their stomachs—we 
feed our brains—on the dead. 

There is many a meal for the hungry 
brain in Ruskin’s remains. We offer 
now a light breakfast to that galaxy of 
American talent called “editorial writ- 
ers.” 

Editorial writing may be defined in 
general as “the art of saying in a com- 
monplace and inoffensive way what 
everybody knew long ago.” There are 
a great many competent editorial writ- 
ers, and the bittern carrying on his | 
trade by the side of some swamp is 
| about as influential as ten ordinary edi- 
torial writers rolled into one. 

Why is it that we are so worthless, 
O editorial writers? Why do we pro- 
duce such feeble results? Why do we 
talk daily through our newspapers to 
ten millions of people and yet have not 
influence to elect a dog catcher? 

Simply because we want to sound 
wise, when that is impossible. Simply 
because we are foolish enough to think 
that commonplaces passed through our 
commonplace minds acquire some new 
value. We start off with a wrong 
notion. We think that we are going to 
lead, that we are going to remedy, that 


177 


eal See 


THE EDITORIAL 


we are going to do the public thinking 
for the public. 

Sad nonsense. The best that the best 
editorial writer can achieve is to make 
the reader think for himself. At this 
point we ask our fellow editorial men— 
our superiors, of course—to adopt Rus- 
kin’s idea of a useful writer. 

In a letter to Mrs. Carlyle, written 
when he was a young man, he outlined 
the purpose which he carried out, and 
which explains his usefulness to his 
fellow-men: 

“T have a great hope of disturbing 
the public peace. in various directions.” 

This was his way of saying that he 
hoped to stir up dissatisfaction, to pro- 
voke irritation, impatience and a deter- 
mination to do better among the un- 
fortunate. He did good, because he 
awoke thought in thousands of others, 
in millions of others. 

Editorial writers, don’t you know that 
stirring up dissatisfaction is the greatest 
work you can do? 

Tell the poor man ten thousand times: 

“There is no reason why you should 
be overworked. There is no reason why 
your children should be half-fed and 
half-educated. There is no reason why 
you should sweat to fatten others.” 

Tell them this often enough, stir up 
their determination sufficiently — they 
will find their own remedies. 

If you want to drive out the handful 
of organized rogues that control poli- 
tics and traffic in votes, don’t talk 
smooth platitudes. Tell the people over 
and over again that the thieves are 
thieves, that they should be in jail, that 
honest government would mean happier 
citizens, that the individual citizen is 
responsible. Keep at it, and the country 
will be made better by those who alone 
can make it better—the people. 


178 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


Hasten but Don’t Hurry.—Style does not neces- 
sarily reflect the manner of writing, whether slow and 
painstaking or rapid and easy. Each individual will 
develop his own best method, but it is safe to say that 
rapidity should be striven for in the formative period 
of one’s literary career. It is necessary that the edi- 
torial writer be able to put “go” and “dash” into what 
he says. But it is difficult to have much faith in ad- 
vice along this line. James Barrie was once asked 
for a recipe for the production of newspaper copy. 
On a crumpled scrap of paper Barrie ventured only 
the following : 


2 pipes equal 1 hour 

2 hours equal 1 idea 

1 idea equals 3 paragraphs 

3 paragraphs equal 1 editorial 


Speaking more seriously John J. Flinn says: 


A great deal of nonsense is written and spoken of the 
“dashed off” editorial, as a great deal of nonsense is 
written and spoken of the “dashed off” essay, or poem. 
Newspaper men, it is true, achieve facility, are often 
gifted with the ability to produce good copy at great 
speed, but I have found no writers whose copy at first 
draft could not be improved by careful editing. The 
further along a practical, working newspaper man goes, 
the more desirous, the more solicitous, is he of oppor- 
tunity to revise his manuscript and his proofs. Only the 
self-conceited, the self-satisfied, and, generally, the less 
efficient writers for the press object to revision. 


179 


THE EDITORIAL 


Self-Expression.—A conscious effort to put one’s 
personality into one’s written discourse—to be one’s 
self—is to be commended. Very likely those who dep- 
recate self-consciousness are right. But in the case 
of many young writers, there seems to be a conscious 
effort to write like everybody else—to write like a 
book, as the phrase is. Any impulse towards an origi- 
nal form of expression seems to them but a tempta- 
tion to break some of the rules which they have come 
to feel as limitations on freedom in writing. The 
young writer will profit by an occasional declaration 
of independence from multitudinous restrictions and a 
determination to be himself in what he writes. 

Learning to Drive Other Models.—Not at all the 
same thing as “writing like everybody else” is the in- 
teresting adventure in style which one enters upon by 
writing in imitation of some one in particular. The 
adventurer writes an editorial, one day, after the man- 
ner of some one with whose work he is familiar and 
who uses a style that might be called abrupt, explosive, 
sensational. The next day, he imitates the sentiment- 
al, oleaginous style of some other popular favorite. 

Successful imitation will require mastery of the 
secrets of the style attempted. This is tremendously 
valuable study. To appreciate just what gives a de- 
lightful originality, whimsical tone, or, perhaps, a stim- 
ulating flavor of gentle surprise, to the style of one 
writer, and to acquire skill in imitating it, 1s to enrich 
forever the experimenter’s power of expression. Of 
course, no writer will consent to appropriate the man- 
nerisms of another, even if mannerisms are worth 

180 


THE MANNER OF SAYING IT 


having. But to condemn an attempt to profit by what 
other writers have added to usage is as absurd as to 
object to the adoption of the accumulated facts of 
grammar or diction. 

True it is that content is more important than form, 
that if an editor has something interesting to say read- 
ers will disregard shortcomings as to style. And it is 
also true that a newspaper office is hardly the place for 
a writer who regards style for its own sake. All 
this, however,.leaves untouched the fact that the well- 
equipped editorial writer is the one who not only has 
something to say but also has the power of saying it 
so that people cannot help listening. 

Re-iteration Has Its Use—Consideration of the 
means by which editors get results would not be com- 
plete without reference to the importance of repeti- 
tion. The advertiser understands it well. The most 
noticeable thing about all publicity campaigns is re- 
iteration. To be sure, it requires resourcefulness to 
handle the same matter day after day and always turn 
towards the reader a new and interesting phase of 
the subject. It requires ingenuity to know just what 
telling phrase may judiciously be elevated to the rank 
of a slogan and repeated verbatim on every occasion. 
But it can be done; is being done; is well worth doing. 


CHAPTER Vil 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


Everybody is a paragrapher, that is to say, every- 
body likes to make concise and pointed comments on 
the news of the day. Some morning we learn from 
the headlines of our paper that the Atlantic has been 
crossed by an airplane. If there is any one near to 
whom a remark can be made, we straightway seek 
some expression bearing on the event. It may be 
only an exclamation; it may be an epigram, but it is 
something pointed. 

The comments inspired by any bit of news represent 
all angles of approach. The same event appears in 
different light to almost every observer. The main 
difference between the casual commentator and the 
veteran paragrapher is that the latter is careful to 
choose a “slant” not entirely obvious or commonplace 
and uses great care as to form of phrasing. 

Several thousand people read the story of a possible 
clew to the identity of an anarchist criminal. Per- 
haps in the case of only one person did reflection on 
the event take this form: 


One’s favorite idea of the anarchist 
is jolted by the statement that a clew 
in the current bomb mystery is a laun- 
dry mark in a linen collar. 


182 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


The news of the downfall of monarchy in Europe 
occasioned universal comment, but it perhaps occurred 
to only one paragrapher to remark that: 


If they keep on establishing republics 
in the old country at the present rate, 
pretty soon there won’t be any titles left 
except in American lodge rooms. 


When it was announced that the Chinese delegates 
refused to sign the treaty of peace at Versailles, the 
comment of one paragrapher was: 


Probably no one could have read the | 
Chinese signatures anyway. | 


Striking a Rich Vein.—From time to time, espec- 
cially good subjects for pragraphers come over the 
horizon. Such was Kaiser Wilhelm. A fair sized 
book could be filled with the paragraphs aimed at the 
last of German emperors. The ingenuity displayed in 
discovering new points of attack is amazing. Another 
favorite object for paragraphers was John Barleycorn. 
It seemed to become almost a game to see who could 
discover some new way of looking at the advent of 
national prohibition. 

There is, then, a distinct form of newspaper writing 
called paragraphing and the writing of such items calls 
for special aptitude. 

No one will deny that some writers show unusual 
facility in making pointed comment, but this is not to 
say that a study of methods used by such writers and 
examination of the characteristics of the best para- 


182 


THE EDITORIAL 


graphs will not help any one to make a beginning in 
this kind of writing. Whether or not one goes further 
with it will depend, as in everything else, on the re- 
sults obtained. 

Must Have High Candle Power.—Editorial par- 
graphs exemplify the extreme of condensation in edi- 
torial writing. Brevity, however, is not their distin- 
guishing characteristic. A six-line editorial which is 
merely a plain statement of fact, for the purpose of 
emphasis, is hardly to be called a paragraph. Wit is an 
essential quality. 

Paragraphs are the spice element of the editorial 
column. This is not saying they are trivial. Fre- 
quently they have flashlight intensity and set forth 
truth with the instantaneous clarity of a good cartoon. 

The public will always crowd the bleachers to watch 
the work of a pitcher-editor who can put curves on 
his ideas. The crowd enjoys a sharp in-shoot on a 
political situation that sends some politican to the side 
lines or calls attention to the low batting average of 
some weak member of the governmental team: 


The news that 5,500 Yanks are still 
missing may be explained by the fact 
that they are all out hunting up theii 
mail or past-due salary. 


Every one enjoys talking to a man or woman whose 
conversation is enlivened by cleverness. Other things 
being equal, such a person wins more attention and a 
greater following than the one who delivers his opin- 
ions without zest. Similarly, readers of the newspaper 

184 


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An ATTRACTIVE PAGE witH CAREFULLY EDITED FEATURES 
AND SPECIAL COLUMNS. 


THE EDITORIAL 


are attracted by an editorial page that has, here and 
there, a sparkle. Moreover, there is in most people’s 
minds an association of wit with wisdom. It seems 
incongruous that the person who scintillates on the 
foibles of others should himself exhibit similar fail- 
ings. Cleverness of thought seems to imply mental 
powers of X-ray penetration. Keen observations sug- 
gest sanity, and judicial faculties. And, since all this 
is true,—even though the reason for such a notion may 
be little more than the fact that wit and wisdom both 
-begin with w,—it is safe to say that the editorial para- 
graph not only lends an entertaining quality to the 
editorial column, but increases its prestige. 

Editorial Snap Shots Are Useful.—The influence 
of editorial paragraphs is one thing that even the ex- 
perimental psychologist would hardly undertake to 
measure; but it seems impossible that facts stated with 
the force that characterizes the successful paragraph 
should fail of effect. The pithy, the pungent, or the 
laconic statement has its special appeal, whether used 
by the admiral going into battle, the statesman satiriz- 
ing his opponent, or the editorial writer. In a com- 
bat of ideas, the editorial paragrapher is more than a 
mere sniper; he is one who puts up star shells to 
lighten the whole situation; or he is the ace who pene- 
trates farthest into enemy lines. 

The Two Varieties—Speaking generally, there 
are two kinds of paragraphs, said the late Charles 
Blakesley, of the Kansas City Star. “The two kinds 
to which I refer are those wholly frivolous, having no 
other purpose than to force a reluctant smile, and the 

186 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


more serious editorial paragraph. As to the useful- 
ness of the editorial paragraph, there can be no doubt. 
There is no excuse or justification for a poor editorial 
paragraph, but every justification in the world for a 
good one. If.a column editorial or a sermon can be 
squeezed into less than fifty words, if a lesson can be 
taught or a moral conveyed in half a dozen lines, 
that’s the way it ought to be said. There remain a few 
old-fashioned publishers who believe an editor’s duty 
is to be solemn, and his next duty to be as dry as 
possible. They picture themselves as Thunderers, and 
like to imagine that their editorial voice is as the roar 
of many waters. They fail to take into account that, 
in these busy days, not one person in several dozen 
reads a column editorial, unless it is double leaded on 
the first page, or for some other exceptional reason. An 
editorial paragraph, on the other hand, can be read 
and understood at a glance. If it is a good paragraph, 
and conveys something the paper wished to have con- 
veyed, it has accomplished something. It has pene- 
trated where a column of stern logic could not enter. 
It has demonstrated that a rapier is a more handy 
weapon than a pile driver.” 

Best Placing of Paragraphs.—In practically all 
editorial columns, pointed paragraphs are welcome. 
There are three ways of placing them with relation to 
other materials. In some papers, paragraphs consti- 
tute a sort of mayonnaise dressing, poured over the 
top of the more substantial portions of editorial opin- 
ion; in others, they are the sauce on which the larger 
bodies of thought float; in still others they are the 

187 


THE EDITORIAL 


mustard between the dry layers of the interpretative 
sandwich. In other words, they come before, or after, 
or between the longer editorials. 

The sandwich method is preferable because it breaks 
up an otherwise monotonous succession of long ed- 
torials or of short paragraphs. It has the same ad- 
vantages that belong to the lecture dealing with seri- 
ous subjects but relieved now and then by a witty re- 
mark or a funny story. It lends to the column an 
easy-to-read appearance. 

No editorial campaign is too serious a matter to be 
helped along by clever paragraphs. 


Licking war savings stamps ‘leaves a 
pleasant taste in the mouth. Try it. 


Usually the paragraph has two parts: first, state- 
ment of a fact—usually a bit of news—reduced to its 
lowest terms as to length; second, comment on the 
fact. These two elements come in no fixed order, and 
are not necessarily treated in separate sentences. 

Points of Excellence.—As a rule, the excellent para- 
graph depends upon the element of surprise. For ex- 
ample, we are told in the news column that a minister 
refused an increase in salary. This in itself is sur- 
prising, but the paragrapher’s explanation of his action 
is even more so: that it was all he could do to collect 
the salary which-he was already allowed. 

The skill of the paragrapher is shown in his ability 
to keep up interest until the last word is said. He 
develops the periodic sentence to a fine point; or, re- 
curring to baseball, his curves “break” just right. 

188 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


Another way in which the paragrapher shows his 
skill, is in leaving something for the reader to supply. 
The most delicious paragraphs are those in which the 
point is not too obvious. A diagram with a para- 
graph is an atrocity. Among the readers’ greatest 
pleasures is the sense of discovery. 

As examples of the maintenance of suspense, the 
following may be given: 


It is really too bad if that naturalist 
has discovered an ape that can talk. 
There is too. much of that now. 


The man who got off that stuff about 
how womankind is advancing by great 
strides had evidently not seen the new 
hobble skirts. 


Revenue agents are already at work 
rounding up all the private stills, prob- 
ably on the theory that the early bird 
catches the “worm.” 


It is only necessary to invert the order in any of 
these paragraphs to observe the effect of anti-climax— 
they peter out. 

Almost any editorial page will supply an example of 
that paragraph, the point of which is not apparent at 
the first rapid reading. This might be called the time- 
fuse type. Often it does not explode until a moment 
or two after it has reached the mark. 


We shall soon see whether marriage 
or drink is the cause of the divorce evil. 


You may swallow your peach stones 
now. 


189 


THE EDITORIAL 


A Few Paragraph Formulae.—Some of the com- 
mon types of paragraphs may be designated by more 
or less expressive natnes in the same way that jokes 
may be classified according to type forms and de- 
scribed by formule. The examples are taken from 
American newspapers. 

1. Exaggeration—This, according to one well- 
known student of humor, is one of the three prime 
qualities that cause human beings to laugh. 


The story is that the original owners 
traded Manhattan Island for a bottle of 
firewater. If they had preserved the 
liquor they would now be in a position 
to make a very advantageous specula- 
tion in the same real estate. 


The Siberian railroad is losing already 
$40,000,000 a month, but it may catch 
up with our speed some day. 


2. Understatement.—This is the second primitive 
root of humor. 


There are moments when we wonder | 
if perhaps the money that war cost 
could not have been spent to better 
advantage in some other way. 


It was quite a war while it lasted. 


3. The Incongruous.—The third of the prime 
sources of humor. 


The undertaker who displayed a “sure, 
we'll finish the job,” loan poster in his 
t window, had an eye to business. 


190 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


These father-and-son banquets are a 
great improvement on the conferences 
the two used to have in the woodshed. 


In place of rail splitting in American 
politics we now have hair splitting. 


4. Puns.—A favorite form used with good effect 
when it is not too obvious. 


The Kaiser’s backers are quitting him 
von by von. 


One reason Germany lost the war 
was because her government was so 
Krupped. 


Hereafter political orators will be 
careful how they appeal to the “plain 
people.’ Women are a part of the 
voting population now. 


5. Metaphor.—This satisfies the natural liking of 
everybody for pictures. 


A good many men who talk bass at 
home are tenors downtown. 


The peace conference persists in its 
policy of a closed door and then won- 
ders why everybody is knocking. 


6. Aphorism.— 


“Well,” said Adelaid, as she told the 
saleswoman to charge it, “it doesn’t 
make any difference how grossly or out- 
rageously you flatter a man; it all 
sticks.” 


If nations were as deliberate in de- 
ciding on war as they are in agreeing 
on peace, there would be no war. 


IQI 


THE EDITORIAL 


7. Modified Quotation.—A pharaphrased or paro- 
died quotation often fits well into a situation. 


To the victors belong the broils. 
See America thirst. 


These are the times that dry men’s 
souls. 


There, little brewery, don’t you cry, 
you'll grind sausages by and by. 


We shall beat our swords into plow- 
shares, and our corkscrews into button- 
hooks. 


Or, another phrased it, 


And the nations shall beat their 
swords into plowshares, and their ver- 
sion of the war into the heads of 
children. 


Or, according to a third, 


After we have beaten our swords into 
plowshares, the next thing will be to 
straighten out our cork-screws into hat- 
pins. 


8. Homily—Moral truth has its place in the para- 
graph column. 


“Better boys, better men,” is the fit- 
ting slogan for boy scout week, also 
it can be turned around. 


Better leave the sugar in the bowl 
than in the bottom of the cup. 


192 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


9g. Distorted Proverbs—This includes also the mis- 
application of a proverb, introducing an element of 
incongruity. 


Of course a cat may look at a king, 
but it will have to hurry. 


When Europe plans to start some- 
thing hereafter, it will “see America 
first.” 


The dough boy is worthy of his 
dough. 


Strange how the advocates of polyg- 
amy overlooked the scripture, “no man 
can serve two masters.” 


10. Lronical Explanation.—A willful misinterpreta> 
tion of meaning. 
Just what was the matter with the 
last Congress has puzzled the nation, 
but the fact that a majority looked on 


tooth paste as a luxury ought to throw 
some light on the subject. 


U. S. A. means U. Stay Arid. 


One reason why Lenine dreads Amer- 
ica is because he remembers how 
promptly we caught and hanged Villa. 


A statesman is a politician you agree 
with. 


Speechless banquets are becoming 
quite the thing these days. Probably 
it’s the price of food that makes them 
speechless. 
11. Paradox —Affording the keen pleasure of dis- 


covering truth in an apparent contradiction. 
193 


THE “EDI PORTAL 


If there’s one thing that hurts more 
than having to pay an income tax, it 
is not having to pay an income tax. 


The trouble with the Irish question 
is that too many of the Irish people 
want what too many of the Irish people 
don’t want. 


In Venezuela, the American dollar is 
at a. discount of twenty per cent. Here 
at home, it is at a discount of about 
fifty per cent. 


12. Innuendo.—Producing its effect by a sly sug- 
gestion or hint. 


With the coming of suffrage, women 
will be eligible to the diplomatic corps 
and an end will be automatically made 
to the objectionable secret diplomacy. 


If Mexico could only be made safe, 
it might become a great winter resort 
for Americans. And then the Mexican 
bandits could become hotel keepers. — 


13. Human Nature—The paragraph that “shows 
us up” as we are. 


The reason a woman doesn’t enjoy 
her vacation is that she’s afraid she 
left the gas burning under the hot- 
water tank. 


The owner of the back lot that is 
filled with tin cans, broken crockery and 
ash heaps, is sure to be found some- 
where discussing the orderly adjustment 
of international affairs. 


194 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


Unless somebody is killed, the acci- 
dent is generally unsatisfactory to the 
reading public. 


If human nature would only work 
as hard for pay as for more pay! 


14. Satire at Institutions and Conventions.— 


What perfectly lovely husbands those 
returning soldiers who have learned to 
obey orders are going to make. 


Before these tight skirts came in, we 
used to send missionaries to China to 
see that the feet of the little Chinese 
girls were unbound so they could walk. 


_ The next president is rapidly increas- 
ing in numbers. 


15. Isolated Syllable — 


bd 


There is nearly as much “ire” a 
“Yand” in Ireland these days. 


16. Epigram.— 


Nothing finer has come out of the 
war than this line from an epitaph in a 
British graveyard in France: “For your 
to-morrow they gave their to-day.” 


17. Historical Allusion— 


Doubtless there were hard-heads who 
told old Moses that the ten command- 
ments were a violation of rights and 
were too ideal for a practical world, 
anyway. 


195 


THE EDITORIAL 
18. Oddities.— 


Hostilities of the world war ceased | 
at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day 
of the eleventh month of the year. 


19. Peculiar Word.— 


The Montenegro congress is called 
the Skupshtaine. Even in a free coun- 
try like ours, nobody has ever had the 
nerve to call our Congress anything 
like that. 


20. Literary Allusion.— 


The advocates of the League say 
wittily that even if it’s only half a 
league, it’s half a league onward, to | 
which the opponents naturally contend 
that half a league is that much too 
much if it’s into the jaws of death, 
into the mouth of. hell. 


21. Frankenstein.—An imaginary type-character 
through whom the editor impresses characteristic sen- 
timents. Typical names for these characters, some of 
whom persist throughout many years, are Old Bill 
Shipman, Professor Silas Pewter, Si Chestnut, Squire 
Thrifty, Judge Pettingill, Hon. Abner Handy. 


Drake Watson says if you have killed 
a bear, you are apt to talk too much 
about: 1 


“T like practical jokes,’ says Peter 
Doubt, “and I think the best one was 
invented by the man who introduced 
lawn-mowers.” 


196 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


The Village Deacon says, “When I go 
into a store to buy anything, I always 
try to get the poorest clerk in the place 
to wait on me. A clever clerk always 
sells me something I don’t want.” 


22. Headline Form.— 


Gravediggers on Strike.—Headline. 

The g. d’s. are on a strike for higher 
wages, which means that the cost of 
dying is going up with the cost of living. 
Now, what will become of the ultimate 
consumer? 


Of course, the various forms of witty paragraph are 
not usually found in an unmixed state. Sometimes it 
seems that there are almost as many varieties as there 
are paragraphs. 

The Less Pointed Styles——1. In the small news- 
paper and less frequently in the larger one, appears 
the paragraph which has for its only purpose the plac- 
ing of emphasis on some news event, 


With his machine sailing upside 
down, Alcock stuck to it like his cele- 
brated namesake, the porous plaster. 


An English dirigible balloon has just 
crossed the Atlantic in safety and has 
started on its return trip. Thus another 
agency has been added to the airship, 
submarine, cable, wireless and steam- 
ship in the successful feat of bridging 
the Atlantic, yet there are people who 
still talk seriously of our isolated posi- 
tion. 


2. The small paper also makes much use of per- 
sonal paragraphs. The editor is well known to most 


197 


THE EDITORIAL 


of his readers, and feels no hesitancy in speaking to 
them about the affairs of his own breakfast table. 


The senior editor received a compli- 
ment the other day. It was in a grocery. 
The clerk asked him if he wanted it 
charged. 


3. Occasionally the editor of the country news- 
paper develops a faculty for home made philosophy. 


We have watched the thing a long 
time and have about come to the con- 
clusion that the best recipe for keeping 
in the straight and narrow path is good 
old-fashioned hard work. 


There is always a wiser and sadder 
bunch of men that come out of the 
wheat field than when they went in, 
but then that is true in every vocation 
in life. 


4. The hortatory paragraph is a common form. 


Boy scout week! Be a good scout 
and help the boy scouts. 


5. Most common of all is the paragraph which 1s 
nothing more than an abbreviated editorial. 


The mulberry tree stands convicted 
as a breeder of flies. It may have its 
place, but that place is not over homes 
and sidewalks. 


The unreasonably high prices prevail- 
ing are demoralizing the people. The 
high cost of living is the greatest evil 
inflicted upon the people in the last 
decade. 


198 


~PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


As has been said, these are really not pointed para- 
graphs at all, but they seem to serve a useful purpose. 

The Sort that Fails to Cheer.—It would be pos- 
sible, though hardly profitable, to devote considerable 
space to the useless paragraph. 

1. The most common type is the statement of the 
obvious. 


People who jeer at the early ineffi- 
ciency of airplane post transportation 
seem to forget that there was a time 
when the pony express was more relia- 
ble than the steam-propelled train. 


For the first time in history, the 
United States celebrated Independence 
Day without the aid of old John B. 
[That is, the saloons were not selling 
strong drinks. 


2. Another space waster is the platitude. 


Almost any one is willing to go out 
and boss a job, but it is sometimes 
pretty hard to find a fellow who will 
do the heavy work. 


3. A rather unfortunate, though at the same time 
entertaining, paragraph is the one for which the 
writer’s supply of metaphors exceeds the demand. 


China refused to sign—and why 
should she? The English Bull had 
washed a lot of dishes in her closet and 
left Japan to mend them. 


Testimony by Paragraphers.—When asked to 
explain how they do their work, paragraphers usually 
deny having anything they could call technique. All 

199 


THE EDITORIAL 


of them admit the utility of certain mental endow- 
ments, and attainments and acquired habits of think- 
ing. To quote again from Mr. Blakesley :. 


Writing paragraphs gets to be a habit. Your para- 
grapher thinks in paragraphs, even as experienced tele- 
graph editors think in jerky headlines. Indeed, I believe 
writing headlines is the best training a paragrapher could 
have. Both are required to arrive at the essence of a 
story in a single swoop and tell it in a few words. You 
will find that this habit has its drawbacks. A man who 
instinctively does his thinking in paragraphs thinks dis- 
connectedly. His capacity to think in a straight line 
suffers from disuse. When he is called upon to write 
something of some length he is at a disadvantage, and 
the “piece” is likely to be disjointed. 


In answer to a correspondent, J. E. House, of the 
Philadelphia Public Ledger, outlined a “course” for 
paragraphers: 


As a three-lesson course in epigram writing we sub- 
mit the following: 

First lesson—Catch and clean your rabbit. 

Second lesson—Baste with a sauce of salt, pepper, 
vinegar, sage, cloves, myrrh and orris root. 

Third lesson—Broil quickly over a hot fire. 


Summary As to How It Is Done.—From such tes- 
timony as this, and from a careful analysis of para- 
graphs, it appears that some of the useful rules of 
procedure, and helpful habits of thinking, may be 
phrased as follows: 

200 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


1. Remember that everything that happens may be 
associated in some way with almost everything else 
that happens. The psychological law of association is 
supreme in the paragrapher’s realm. 

For example, the paragrapher reads in the head- 
lines that anarchists have again been active in New 
York. By simple association, the word anarchist sug- 
gests bombs, or foreigners, or mobs, or red flags. Each 
of these associations calls up a second association. 
Finally the paragrapher finds what he is looking for: 


Let us confine the waving of the red 
flag to our railroad crossings. 


Or, perhaps, the word “red” calls up its associations 
and he writes the following: 


We whipped the redskins in order to 
gain this country; we whipped the red- 
coats in order to gain our independ- 
ence; and we are not going to allow 
the reds to mar what we have gained. 


The paragrapher reads the boasts of a German 
admiral. His habit of association enables him to 
evolve: 


German naval officers maintain that 
their fleet was never defeated. Neither 
was the Chinese fleet. 


Associations based on sound of words leads to the 
pun more often than any other type. 
2. Read headlines in newspapers with an eye alert 
for the unusual and the ludicrous. Then, through as- 
201 


THE EDITORIAL 


sociation, bring this element into incongruous or illum- 
inating relations with some other fact. 

3. The paragrapher must never cease studying 
people. The more he knows about them, the more 
hooks he will have available on which to hang inter- 
pretative comment. ,The most common things that 
people do become interesting when done in an ab- 
normal manner. For example, all human beings are 
endowed with instincts. One of the most noticeable is 
the acquisitive. The normal exercise of it is not 
interesting, but when the person manifests the 
acquisitive to an abnormal degree, or when, on the 
other hand, he manifests a lack of it, he furnishes 
interesting material to the commentator on human 
nature. The same thing is true in respect to other 
instincts such as the constructive instinct, the hunting 
instinct, the parental instinct. 

4. It will be of advantage to the paragrapher to 
understand how to make use of a book of quotations. 
Memory may be relied upon sometimes to supply the . 
quotations that fit some current event, or that may 
be modified, or paraphrased, so as to fit it. But the 
deliberate search through a book of quotations for 
material useful in paragraphing almost always has its 
reward. 

5. The paragrapher should early learn to discard 
the idea that humor depends for its effectiveness upon 
shocking some one’s sensibilities—even a prude’s. 
Good taste in paragraphing is indispensable to retain- 
ing the respect of the great majority of readers. It is a 
case of bad judgment when a newspaper writer con- 

202 


‘4 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


cludes that indelicate witticism which “goes well” in a 
burlesque show will also go well in the editorial 
column. Occasionally a paragrapher is found who 
eliminates bad taste from his writing only after a slow 
process of education at the hands of the community. 
This is an expensive method of handling such a case. 
It costs the community too heavily. There are much 
quicker and more effective methods. | 

6. Most paragraphers agree that “stingers” should 
be used sparingly and only when the occasion fully 
warrants. Injudicious ridicule is too likely to create 
sympathy, even for an evil man. 

7. Flippancy or trivialities are not to be employed 
just to display wit. It is unfortunate if the paragrapher 
creates the impression that his sole purpose is to 
entertain. Likewise it is necessary to preserve a 
reasonable degree of consistency in point of view on 
any question which is taken up repeatedly. An editor 
who seems to care very little what he says, so long as it 
is clever, can have little influence. | 

8. The ideal aimed at should be that of producing 
paragraphs which are so well put that they will be 
worth reading twice, and so well justified that the 
paragrapher may be thought to be following Thack- 
eray’s admonition as his guiding star: “Ah, ye knights 
of the pen! May honor be your shield and truth tip 
your lances! Be gentle to all gentle people. Be modest 
to women. Be tender to children. And as for the 
Ogre Humbug, out sword and have at him.” 

The One Who Runs a Column.—The columnist 
is a paragrapher who has a department all his own, 

203 


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PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


usually on the editorial page. More than half of our 
larger city papers have such writers on their staffs. 

The columns bear all manner of spicy titles sug- 
gestive of their highly flavored content. The Hornet’s 
Nest, Shooting Stars, In Lighter Vein, Under the 
Spot Lights, A Line o’ Type or Two, The Conning 
Tower, Bits of By-Play, Twilight Thinks, We’ll Say 
So, Kansas Notes, On the Spur of the Moment, On 
Second Thought, By the Way, The Globe Trotter, 
Short Shavings, Such Is Life, are representative 
names. 

Feature columns are usually of so miscellaneous a 
character as almost to beggar description. Pointed 
paragraphs of all varieties, anecdotes, light verse, prose 
poems, conundrums, reader contests, philosophy, com- 
munications from readers, exchange items with or 
without comment, miniature drawings—these are some 
of the ingredients that compose the peppery hodge- 
podge which the columnist serves day after day. 

The columnist’s job is not as easy as it looks. Few 
columns are so bad but that it may be said that writing 
them is much harder than reading them. The daily 
necessity of producing an entertaining column, long 
after the novelty of the proceeding has worn off, 
becomes as much of a burden with most writers as any 
other monotonous work. Few can do it successfully. 
Some one has said that the columnist is the radium of 
journalism, 

J. E. House thus comments on the trials of a column 
“hound” : 

205 


THE EDITORIAL 
THOUGHTS ON WRITING A 
COLUMN 


Writing a column is a fine job. It 
is composed in about equal parts of 
labor, work and worry. <A _ column 
hound toils and slaves to get out his 
column and then worries his head off 
for fear he’ll go stale and lose his job. 
All that is expected of a column hound 
is that he be amusing or clever in 
twenty-five or thirty different ways 
every day. A vaudeville performer can 
go out with one act and get it booked 
for forty weeks solid. The next year 
he can go over the same circuit with 
the same act. The people forget what 
he said last year and laugh their heads 
off at his stuff. So long as he busts 
somebody over the. head with some- 
thing or sticks his finger in somebody’s 
eye the audience will howl with laugh- 
ter. It doesn’t make any difference how 
many times the audience has seen him 
do it. Busting somebody over the head 
is laughter’s principal accessory. 

A column hound must have a new act 
every day. If he busts anybody over 
the head or jabs his finger in anybody’s 
eye he gets the paper into trouble. Most 
anything is funny on the stage. Very 
few things are funny in print. Cold 
print reveals a man at about lifesize. 
If you don’t believe it go out and listen 
to a speech by your favorite rabble- 
rouser and then try to read it in cold 
print. One trouble with a column 
hound is that when the stuff doesn’t 
flow freely he becomes desperate ard 
tries to force it. The saddest thing 
revealed upon the printed page is the 
forced witticism or the forced wallop. 

Nearly every column hound suffers 
periodic attacks of a disease scientifi- 
cally known as contraction of the bean. 


206 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


During these attacks the bean dwindles 
to the size of a half-grown walnut, its 
formation takes on the quality of l:me- 
stone and becomes impregnable to sug- 
gestion or idea. To a journeyman 
column hound the attacks come two or 
three times a year. They run their 
course in from three days to three weeks. 
The period is one of acute suffering, 
the suffering being divided into two 
parts. The first spasm comes during 
his working hours when his attempts 
to project quip and whim-wham pro- 
mote the keenest physical discomfort. 
The second spasm comes during the 
night and keeps him awake for hours, 
the while he blushes in shame and hu- 
miliation for the stuff he perpetrated 
during the day. We have been a 
column hound for seventeen or eighteen 
years. We figure that during that per- 
iod we have annually perspired a hun- 
dred barrels of blood, such perspiration 
being inspired by a keen sense of our 
own futility. 


The columnist, however, is well paid and in some 
cases enjoys other rewards, suchas a state, or even 
national, reputation. In the majority of cases, the 
name of the writer either appears at the head of the 
column or is concealed only by a thin veil of anonymity. 
Sometimes one of these feature editorial writers 
enjoys obtruding his own personality into the column 
to the point of ghastly egotism, in a manner, however, 
which is hugely entertaining. 

“Writing paragraphs,’ declares Charles Blakesley, 
“is far from being an ideal job, yet a young news- 
paper man, if he is disposed to specialize in some 
branch of the work, might do worse than cultivate his 

207 


THE EDITORIAL 


gifts in this direction. You will encounter days when | 
your intellectual faculties balk like a gasoline engine, 
and still you are expected to turn out your mirth- 
provoking quota. At such times you may wish you had 
gone in for a business career, realizing that by now 
you might be prominently identified with the delivery 
department of one of our foremost steam laundries. 
Nevertheless, the paragrapher has a little niche all 
his own. Others on the paper receive greater rewards 
and greater recognition, but they also have greater 
responsibilities to fill their days with vexation and keep 
them awake nights. The paragrapher is out of the 
everlasting rough-and-tumble scrimmage of the news 
department. As long as his work is satisfactory, he is 
usually free to write what he pleases, and is subjected 
to fewer annoyances than any man on the paper. He 
is haunted by no fears of a promotion.” 

Aims and Methods.—The controlling purpose of 
the column is entertainment. C. H. Thompson of the 
Kansas City Star, puts it this way: 


To establish, if possible, a human relation between 
the paper and its readers; to sharpen the dull items of 
news, and dull those subjects which pierce and lacerate 
the human heart; to lighten the burdens of the reader by 
minimizing, or in other cases, emphasizing, the burdens 
of others; to interpret; occasionally to instruct; and never 
to bore—there are no lengths of absurdity to which he 
will not go to avoid being dull 

And as to more serious purposes: Tell something the 


reader already knows, but has half forgotten, or come to 

regard as an experience peculiar to himself. This tends 

to show him that his lot isn’t much different from that of 
208 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


others. If a columnist can succeed in making his readers 
realize that we are all about the same kind of folks, it 
ought to make them more tolerant and less selfish, and 
therefore happier. 


Don Marquis, of the New York Sun, embodies his 
ideals in the following “prayer”: 


I pray thee, make my colyum read, 
And give me thus my daily bread. 
Endow me, if thou grant me wit, 
Likewise with sense to mellow it. 
Save me from feeling so much hate 
My food will not assimilate. 

Open my eyes that I may see 

Thy world with.more of charity, 
And lesson me in good intents 

And make me friend of innocence. 
Make me (sometimes, at least) discreet; 
Help me to hide my self-conceit, 
And give me courage now and then 
To be as dull as are most men, 

And give me readers quick to see 
When I am satirizing Me. 


Sources of Materials——For materials, the col- 
umnist goes to the same sources as the editorial para- 
grapher: “I get suggestions from newspapers and 
magazines and the people about me,” explains one 
writer. “These accumulate in the subconscious mind 
and sometimes lie there unused for months.’”’ Another 
writer says: “I sit at my typewriter and wait for an 
idea. You must merely go on living and if it is in you, 


209 


THE EDITORIAL 


it will come out.” Or another, “Go everywhere for 
material. There are fields, of course, that the columnist 
learns to avoid from having been bruised on previous 
invasions. He learns to choose according to his tastes. 
It is not hard. He should learn the value of chronic 
good nature, stern fairness, a sense of kindly humor 
rather than of the ridiculous, a terse style, and uncom- 
promising loyalty to the newspaper.” 

A rich and almost exclusive source of materials for 
the columnist is the public itself. Baiting the public 
is one of his favorite games. “A paragraph that antag- 
onizes is as much to be desired as one that pleases,” 
testifies one writer. Another writer, however, reports 
that, “There is no sure way of stimulating contri- 
butions. One happens upon an idea which draws 
response from the public, but may be unable to get 
results by the use of a provocative that seems much 
more promising.” 

On this point, Mr. House dilates, in true paragraphic | 
tone as follows: 


Average Wife, who contributes an occasional insouciant 
note to the column, has written in to express her free and 
untrammeled opinion of the gent who grinds it out: “You 
are,” writes Average Wife, “too soured, narrow and biased 
to be just and fair. You see everything from one point 
of view only—your own. No wonder your evenings at 
home are rare and infrequent. A happy deliverance to 
the woman who bears your name. If she has not yet 
reached Reno in her western wanderings, she will soon.” 
... We fear Average Wife has failed to comprehend 
one of the smartest tricks of this trade. Since our dis- 

210 


PARAGRAPHS AND PARAGRAPHERS 


position is to play all cards face up on the table, we don’t 
mind revealing it. No male person can successfully, for 
any considerable period, challenge the attention and hold 
the interest of femininity unless he is able to annoy and 
exasperate it. ... We once held a clientele of annoyed, 
exasperated, indignant and fluttering women in firm leash 
for more than fifteen years by the exercise of that simple 
little trick... . The paragraph about woman is one of 
the most valued in the repertoire of the column hound. 
It is susceptible to more than a million variations and can 
be exploited with or without reverse English. It always 
contains a grain of truth and seldom fails to take an 
encore. 


Columnists receive considerable counsel from their 
readers: “Most of it is not kind, but it is sincere and 
the criticisms are usually just.” 

The publisher does not always consider seriously 
the opinions expressed in a feature column. He may 
even ignore divergence of these opinions from the 
policies of the paper. A clever column is a circulation 
builder and for that reason, if for no other, it is fairly 
sure of the publisher’s appreciation. 


CHAPTER IX 


TYPOGRAPHICAL APPEARANCE 


Of the requirements that an editorial should be seen, 
read, believed, and acted upon, the first and second are, 
to some extent, matters of typography. 

At the extreme of conservatism is the newspaper 
which considers it undignified and cheap to use any but 
conventional styles of type and make-up, maintaining 
that the thoughtful reader does not need to have his 
reading made easy or attractive, and that, as for the 
other kind of reader, it is willing to take whatever 
chances are necessary rather than to turn handsprings 
in order to attract him, 

At the extreme of sensationalism, is the editorial 
column, perhaps twice as wide as the news columns— 
perhaps of varying widths in successive issues—set in 
type larger and sometimes bolder than the type used 
for the main body of the paper. News headings fre- 
quently worthy to be called scare heads are put over 
editorial matter, decorative borders, initial letters, and, 
sometimes, small illustrations set in from the side, 
enhance the attention arresting quality of the column. 
It appears sometimes as if the editorials had been set 
in the ad. alley. The word “restraint” is not found in 
the lexicon of a paper of this type. 

212 


TYPOGRAPHICAL APPEARANCE 


Shaking One’s Fist in Type.—Lord Fisher of 
Kilverstone, the “father” of the modern English navy 
and First Lord of the Admiralty during the World 
War, once bewailed the fact that it is hard to shake 
one’s fist in type: 


The man who reads this in his armchair would take 
it all quite differently if I could walk up and down in 
front of him and shake my fist in his face. I tried once, 
so as to make the dead print more lifelike, using different 
kinds of type—big Roman block letters for the “fist- 
shaking,” large italics for the cajoling, small italics for 
the facts and the ordinary print for the fool. The printer’s 
price was ruinous and the effect ludicrous. But I made 
this compromise and he agreed to it: whenever the fol- 
lowing words occurred they were to be printed in large 
capitals: “Fool,” “Ass,” “Congenital Idiot.” 


Editors need to realize that the effort to attract 
attention may be overdone, and that, even if a few 
additional readers are attracted to the page, the price 
paid for them in loss of prestige in the eyes of other 
readers is too great. 

The Editorial Heading.—In the opinion of the 
writer, the limitations of the one-line editorial heading, 
one column wide, are too severe. Form should not be 
allowed to tyrannize over matter. One word may be 
more effective than ten, in which case use only one. 
On the other hand, three lines may be necessary to 
show why the editorial is worthy of a reading. For 
such cases the style sheet should provide a three-line 
heading. The popular remark that “you can’t believe 

213 


THE EDITORIAL 


what you read in the newspapers” is to be charged 
largely to the absurdities in headline writing for news 
stories. Statements which are properly guarded in the 
story appear without qualification in the heads. There 
is no room for qualifications. The rapid reader gets 
impressions from the headings which the next day’s 
news shows were incorrect. He draws the natural con- 
clusions as to the paper’s credibility. Let it be urged 
that in editorial heads, at least, the rights of the 
message be respected. The heading is the show card 
for the material that it advertises. It ought to be 
attractive and compelling. If a two-deck head will 
serve best, let it be used, with due regard, of course, 
for the necessity of maintaining a characteristic ap- 
pearance of editorial matter distinguishing it sharply 
from news. The principles of typographical display 
are wholly pragmatic. 

The Best Style a Matter of Taste——Questions as 
to what are the most appealing typographical styles 
for different classes of readers, and as to the extent 
to which readers’ tastes can be educated, and as to the 
amount of compromise the editor can afford to make 
with his own typographical standards, will hardly 
receive the same answers in any two newspaper fields. 
Arguments can always be brought forward for and 
against any proposed style. It is probably enough to 
say in this connection that experiments at changing the 
typographical appearance of the editorial columns are 
a good thing, provided means are taken to find out 
how readers are affected by innovations. This is more 
difficult than it sounds and, at best, the editor will 

214 


TYPOGRAPHICAL APPEARANCE 


remain in some doubt as to whether his thoughts are 
being sent forth dressed in the best possible manner. 

The New York Evening Post, a newspaper credited 
with being extremely conservative as to any change in 
its appearance, recently adopted wider columns for its 
editorial matter. It was felt, as explained by one of 
the Evening Post’s officers, “that the wider measure 
gives a little more character to the editorial matter and 
leads the reader to visualize the whole editorial as of 
reasonable length rather than stretching on to a long, 
thin column. Also it was felt that the whole effect of 
the page seems more open and inviting.” 

It is generally accepted that editorials should have 
an appearance distinguishing them from news. This is 
in accord with the theory that the successful newspaper 
in the future will be the one which gives its reader the 
news on all phases of any matter which it handles, 
without editorial color in the story or in the heading, 
and that a sharp distinction shall always be made 
between the editorial columns, in which the preferences 
and policies of the paper govern, and the news columns 
in which only one policy governs, the policy of printing 
the news. 

Type Measurements.—A few of the specifications 
for different styles of editorial columns may be given 
in typographical terms. 3 

1. The width of column is usually 13 pica ems, but 
is sometimes as narrow as 12 ems, or as wide as the 
seven- or eight-column page. (A pica em is 1-6 of 
an inch).. 

Editorials are usually set in seven or eight point 

215 : 


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TYPOGRAPHICAL APPEARANCE 


type, the same size used in the news, but some news- 
papers use type as large as twelve or fourteen point, 
sometimes blackface. (A point is 1-72 of an inch). 

3. The space between lines is commonly four points 
instead of one or two points as in news matter. In 
other words, editorial matter is ‘double leaded.” 

4. Headings are usually one line of capitals in the 
size of type in which the body of the editorial is set. 
Sometimes, however, a larger size of type is used for 
the heading. A few papers use, occasionally, a two or 
three deck head, the first line set in capital letters and 
the second deck, in the form of an inverted pyramid 
or half diamond, set in a smaller size of capitals and 
lower case. Still another variation is the use of boxed- 
in headings, sometimes extending across several 
columns. 

The paper shortage and the consequent rise in price 
of paper during and after the World War compelled 
publishers to practice economies that affected the 
appearance of the editorial pages. In some instances 
columns and margins were narrowed so as to admit 
eight columns into a regular seven-column page. In 
others the double leading of editorials was abandoned 
in favor of single leading or no leading at all, if the 
news was set solid. Advertising was crowded into the 
page and less important features were crowded out or 
cut down in length. 

The Problem of Length.—Length of editorials, 
though not a matter of typography, may be viewed as 
a physical characteristic affecting the general appear- 
ance of the page. In most editorial offices, length is 

217 


THE EDITORIAL 


not determined solely by the requirements of the sub- 
ject to be handled. It is always possible to leave some- 
thing over, to be said on the following day, or to treat 
different aspects of the same subject in separate edi- 
torials. Therefore, without serious damage to the 
thought content of the editorial, a general limitation 
as to length may be adopted with, of course, the pos- 
sibility of radical departure from the rule when 
occasion demands. It is related that Joseph. Pulitzer 
once directed an editorial writer who had been working 
two weeks on a special investigation, to condense the 
whole matter into an editorial of twenty lines. Doubt- 
less this limitation seemed ridiculous to the editorial 
writer, but on the other hand, Mr. Pulitzer’s theory as 
to the importance of condensation has much in its 
favor. The opinion may be ventured that the average 
length of editorials should be diminished rather than 
increased, from present practice. 


CHAPTER X 


THE EDITORIAL PAGE 


The ideal editorial page is as difficult to describe 
as are other ideals that are largely matters of indi- 
vidual taste and into which the “human element” en- 
ters largely. Any page which is contending for the 
title of ideal must be judged from several points of 
view; and the degree of its merit will depend partly 
upon the success with which compromises have been 
made between these various and, almost always, an- 
tagonistic aims. 

Some Conflicting Demands.—1. To a reasonable 
degree, the editorial page should reflect the tastes and 
ideas of the publisher. This, however, while a per- 
fectly reasonable requirement, seems more like an inci- 
dental matter than one vitally.determining the ideal 
quality of the page. 

2. From the point of view of the editorial writer, 
the page should afford opportunity for free and honest 
expression of opinions and for participation in the 
shaping of affairs. There should be nothing on the 
page to detract from the influence of the editorial 
columns—nothing incongruous. It is here, rather than 
in the news columns, that the paper’s individuality 
appears. 

219 


THE EDITORIAL 


3. From the reader’s standpoint, the ideal editorial 
page is anything that the reader is; but all readers 
share in the desire that an editorial page be one that 
can be found without undue effort, read with interest 
and profit, believed without fear of deception, and 
acted upon without liability to regret. 

4. From the point of view of the community, the 
editorial page needs to be constructive and serviceable. 

5. From the point of view of society as a whole, 
the sum total of the influence flowing out of the edi- 
torial page must work towards ends that are good. Or, 
as Doctor Washington Gladden has put it, in describ- 
ing what should be the influence of a newspaper: 


First, to teach the people to avoid exaggeration and 
violent speech, and to cultivate moderate and rational 
modes of expression. 

Second, to resist the tendencies which dementalize 
democracy, and which substitute the mob-mind for the 
deliberative mind. 

Third, to hold the popular judgment firmly to the truth 
that character and manhood and not money and popularity 
are the central values of human existence. 

Fourth, to turn the thoughts of men more and more 
from the negative virtue of detecting and exposing the 
evil to the positive virtue of discerning and praising the 
good. 


The “Where” of It—The reasons that seem con- 
clusive for collecting the opinions of a newspaper into 
one column, or one page—aside from its critical 
opinions on literature, art, music, or the drama, and 

220 


THE EDITORIAL PAGE 


special departments such as finance and sports—have 
been heretofore mentioned. All large papers adhere 
to this practice. A few, however, when they desire 
especially to emphasize an editorial, give it position on 
the front page. This practice while it results in an 
immediate gain in attention, seems ill-advised from the 
point of view of the general interests of the editorial 
page. Each paper, however, is the only competent 
judge as to the best way of getting desired results. 

Newspapers show no agreement as to the proper 
position of the editorial page. The positions most 
commonly chosen are on pages four, six, eight, or ten, 
depending upon the size of the paper. The back page 
is preferred by a few on account of the prominence it 
lends to the page, and one paper uses the second page 
from the last, because, in this position, it is always 
easy to find. 

Both Extremes Imperfect.—It is difficult to 
choose names that accurately describe the different 
types of editorial pages. Such more or less vaguely 
expressive adjectives as high-brow, popular, conserv- 
ative, sensational, intellectual, human interest, cheap, 
variegated, heart-to-heart, are used with more or less 
justification. There are individual differences in almost 
every case, but broadly speaking, two general types are 
easily distinguishable: the page that, both as to its form 
and its content, is conservative ; and, on the other hand, 
the page which either as to its form or its content, or 
both, is sensational. Neither one can be condemned 
out of hand, though it is safe to say that a vision of 
the tremendous part the newspaper of the future might 

221 


THE EDITORIAL 


play begets impatience with that habitual sensation- 
alism employed without seeming justification as a 
means to a good end. Some editorial pages almost 
require gutters to carry off the flood of emotionalism. 
Upon occasion and in order to arouse an indifferent 
public, sensational methods are laudable, but not day 
in and day out—the voltage is too high. It should be 
understood here that “sensational” is not synonymous 
with “yellow.” The word “yellow,’ used in jour- 
nalism, denotes falsification, injustice, or indecency. 

How Much and How Fully Read?—The quantity 
of original matter varies in different newspapers from 
less than one column to a full page. The average is 
between two and three columns. The amount appear- 
ing from issue to issue in any given paper is fairly 
constant. The question is not one of printing an 
amount which the typical reader may be expected to 
digest thoroughly. Not one reader in a hundred. will 
do that. It is rather a question of printing a sufficient 
amount to allow for variety enough to insure every ° 
reader’s finding at least one editorial on a subject of 
prime interest to himself. When public attention is 
occupied by some crisis in affairs, an editorial on this 
subject may well occupy the whole space available for 
editorials. On that day, perhaps, the editorial page 
will be read thoroughly by ninety per cent of the sub- 
scribers. Under normal conditions, perhaps not more 
than fifty per cent read anything on the editorial page. 
On the average, each individual reads not more, per- 
haps, than ten per cent of the page. 

Considering the ordinary man’s habits in reading 

222 


@ 


ot OORT PAGE 


his newspaper, and remembering that habits may be 
changed with difficulty, it is safe to venture the belief 
that the quantity of editorials in the metropolitan paper 
need not exceed four columns. Since the editorial 
writers are permanent members of the staff, this 
amount will be fairly constant; but great flexibility 
will exist as to the amount apportioned to different 
subjects, and the number of subjects treated. 

In the small paper, the owner of which is the edi- 
torial writer as well as the news editor, and sometimes, 
also, business manager, circulation and advertising 
solicitor and foreman of the printing office, the 
quantity of editorial matter is at the mercy of cir- 
cumstances. There should certainly always be edi- 
torials. It is difficult to believe but that the interests 
of any community, no matter how small, in which a 
newspaper is published, call for at least a column of 
original editorials. | 

Cafeteria Methods.—As to other matter on the 
editorial page, there is great variety. 

In the country paper the remainder of the page is 
usually occupied by reprint, news, and advertisements. 
This lack of variety does not mean that the page must 
be inferior; nor does the presence of advertisements 
damage it, provided the pyramid make-up—building 
up the advertising from the lower right hand corner— 
is used, so that the editorials are in top-of-column 
position and can be tastefully arranged. News stories 
with heads so large as to overshadow the editorial 
heads, ought to be excluded. In the city paper there 
seems to be hardly any limit to the number of varieties 

223 


THE EDITORIAL 


of features and departments originated to serve as 
frosting on the editorial cake—selected usually by 
some one else than the editor. Among these are car- 
toons, communications, “opposition columns,” verse, 
feature columns, jokes and anecdotes, puzzles, con- 
tinued stories, theater news, “sob stuff,” the weather, 
health department, answers to questions, historical and 
biographical feature stories, syndicate features, re- 
print editorials—useful in backing up the paper’s own 
policies, or, better, in presenting other points of view. 
Then there are: the flag,-market news, announcements 
of deaths, births and marriages, paper’s motto or its 
“platform” or a statement of its policies, advertising 
and subscription rates, the calendar of the day or week, 
news, interviews, advertisements. Some papers have 
as many as a score of different kinds of materials on 
the editorial page. At the other extreme are a very few 
newspapers which print nothing but original editorials 
with perhaps a decorative heading over them and a 
motto. 

The tendency to make the editorial page a sort of 
literary museum or, perhaps better, a vaudeville per- 
formance, is to be deprecated. With a few exceptions 
these features soon wear out. They are not necessary 
to attract attention to editorials that are worth reading 
and it is doubtful that they ever operate in that way. 
The only secret of a successful editorial page is to 
make the editorial column itself readable. 

Three Outstanding Features.—Out of this mis- 
cellany, however, three features may be selected as 
being so closely related to the columns of original 

224 


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An EpirorIAL Pace 


TOPICS OF THE DAY 


“Attorney-General Palmer says the prive of meat has been felling for three months. A! the 
repeat eet nme same rate of epeod it shoald reach aormad (Evel in 832 years.” — New Haven Tieter-Leader. 
a 


=== =| What Germany’s Week-En 
Revolution May Lead To 


‘The outbreaks and disorders in Germany, some for monarchy and some for Baluhevtam 
bring np shurply the question whether s 1a ty the beut interests of the Allies to enforce 
poo Cormany the terms of the Treaty A Washington dispatch says a fear is felt \n of 
ftvisl circles that Russian and German Holshevismm may join bands and drag Europe own 
tute red ruin uulan wid le extented “Simple aagucity, apart foi any more gutierous von 
sidcrntioy, auctluna a liberal enfor it of the veace terms,” avers the Atlanta Jdu cud 
which remarks that ""\1 would be a +t je sort of equity that would end tie play by plung- 
ing the rvecucd bermne back mio ealamity rather than spare the vulaio a ping or two of 
hus sentence 


The teadug article m THE LITERARY DIVEST for this week, March 27th, preseit« 
a study of Antorican oditorial upitiwn upyn the enforsement of the Versailles Treaty. aul 
hy reading it the avcrago reader will gel an uncluuded idea of many probleus that eoufrout 
the Allled uations as the preseut time. 


Othe wterestiug cewe-articten in thin wuaiber of the “Digest ™ are. 
Britich-American Discords 
A Survey of the Press in the United States and Britain Shows There le Food For 
Serious Thought In Present Relations Between England and the United States 


France's New Hour of Need The Madonna of the Battle-Field 
State Attacks on Prohibition Industry's Encroachment on Sunday 
Woman-Suffrage Victory in rhe | To Make Christian Foasts of Hindu 
French Replies to President Wilson's Feotivals 
Charge The Origin of the Presideney. 
A Way to Wim South America Lessons m American Citizenship 
Aiding War-Criminalsto Escape | Series 
Detachable Power for Freight Bo Cinaiiait Tallow Choa Cosh Oae 
R f : put—Paper and Pulp—Fisheries 
| RRrrny ered “Crucifixion of Humanity” in | A- (Mitchell Palmer—"Fighting 
Ae aging America by Movie | When Insomnia and « Few Marines 
peices Saved Port-Au-Prince 


What the “Geniuses” Did to Ireland | The Free and Easy Spendere 
Ancient Redwoods Butchered for The Yankees in Siberia 
Grape-Stakes Beat of the Current Pootry 


Many Striking tlustrations Inetading Humorous Cartoons 
Marth 27% Number on Sale Teday—News-dealers 10-Conte—$4.00 2 Yeas 


i@ Jiteriry Digest 


vuNK @ WAGNALLD CONPANT (Publithen of the Fegan NEW Seqdend Dioner). WEW ORE 


CoNTAINING A GREAT VARIETY OF 
MATERIALS, 


THE EDITORIAL 


opinion as to deserve to be handled as auxiliary edi- 
torial matter. 

1. First in importance is the cartoon—a pictorial 
editorial. Cartoonists of the present day are perform- 
ing an immeasurable service to the country and also 
to the press. Historically considered, the cartoon is 
one of the most interesting vehicles of opinion. Great 
questions have been opened to the public, and im- 
portant reforms have been accomplished by cartoonists. 

George Fitch once described their power in the 
following characteristic words: eu 


The cartoonist has to be a humorist, a philosopher 
and a close student of mankind in addition to being boss 
of an obedient and well trained pencil. He has to boil 
down the concentrated wisdom of a hundred stump 
speakers into a three column picture done in a hurry, 
while the engraving room is yelling for his work. He 
has to say more in the picture of a fat man and an ele- — 
phant than a perspiring candidate can utter in a two- 
hour speech and he usually does it. He preaches sermons 
in snickers and when he has made good, people look at 
his funny, freakish absurdities at the breakfast table 
and then turn to the heavy editorials to see if they are 
corroborated by the cartoon. 

A cartoonist once broke up Tammany and sent its 
boss to jail. Ten thousand speakers have tried to dup- 
licate the trick ever since but they haven’t succeeded. 
Sometimes we think that the nation doesn’t appreciate 
a really good cartoonist. It should elect him to office. 
Think what a stump speaker he would make if he got 
out to defend his administration with a soft-nosed lead 
pencil and three acres of white paper on an easel! 

226 


THE EDITORIAL PAGE 


The theory sometimes expressed, however, that the 
cartoon is. superseding the editorial has no apparent 
justification. It is obvious that a good cartoon reaches 
a far wider public than the good editorial; that it 
delivers its message quicker and with less effort on the 
part of the individual, and sometimes with more force. 
It speaks the universal language. But, after all, the 
cartoon can say very little; it presents only a cross- 
section of some interesting situation. It is in fact little 
more than a drawn paragraph. The picture editorial 
supplements verbal editorials most acceptably, but it 
can not supersede them. One who cares to pursue the 
subject at length will find it interesting to analyze 
and classify cartoons from the standpoint of their 
purpose, of interpretation, argument, appeal, or enter- 
tainment, or from the standpoint of their style and 
technique. It is also an excellent practice to work up 
ideas for cartoons. 

2. A second logical auxiliary of the editorial 
column is the column of communications. A great 
variety of headings have been invented for this depart- 
ment, and sometimes it is handled as news material. 
Experience generally supports the view that it consti- 
tutes a valuable feature of the paper. It is a per- 
petual “day in court,’ an open forum, a safety valve, 
a barometer, or a layman’s pulpit. 

While the rules for handling communications vary 
considerably, the best practice seems to recommend 
that communications be edited so as to make them as 
short and interesting as possible without doing an 
injustice to the writers; that the name be printed or 

227 


THEVEDIPOR IAL 


withheld as the writer directs; that anonymous com- 
munications be not printed (though the most famous 
of all communications to newspapers, the “Letters of 
Junius,” were such); that liberality be shown as to 
printing communications on all sides of all questions; 
that no violation of good taste be allowed; that an 
editor is justified in giving preference to communi- 
cations supporting a policy of the paper; that the 
practice of writing communications in the office in 
order to give an impression that public opinion is 
aroused for some object is indefensible. 

3. Newspaper verse, when, as frequently, it is 
used as a vehicle for interpretation, argument, per- 
suasion or entertainment, becomes an auxiliary edi- 
torial feature. Short verse has the characteristics of a 
pointed paragraph, with rhythm and rime added. A 
similar utility attaches to what is commonly called 
“the prose poem.” 

A few papers, in communities where there is only 
one paper, or where one or more political parties have 
no newspaper organ, establish on their editorial pages 
“opposition columns.” The custom is not spreading. 
It will naturally pass out of existence wherever the 
party organ disappears, through consolidations or 
otherwise, and the independent press takes its place. 
A wide-open department for communications is all the 
“opposition column” demanded in most instances. 

Variations on Sunday.—An interesting dissim- 
ilarity may be found between the week-day and the 
Sunday editorial pages of some daily newspapers. In 
the paper which shows the most extreme contrasts in 

228 


THE EDITORIAL PAGE 


this respect, the week-day issues contain a preponder- 
ance of syndicate features—‘“comics,” “strips,” senti- 
mental philosophy, nature notes, soul-to-soul talks, 
maxims, paragraphs and continued stories. The Sun- 
day issues have more inviting pages, two-thirds filled 
with editorial matter in wide columns and the other 
third poetry and reprint from periodicals and books. 
The contrasts in most papers, however, are less 
obvious, consisting merely in the use of more solid 
features for Sunday, an increase in the amount of 
editorial matter, and a choice of subjects regarded as 
more appropriate for Sabbath day consideration. 


CHAPTER XI 


EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITY 


Pretty much everything in this book has direct or 
indirect reference to some question of editorial respon- 
sibility. Responsibilities grow out of relationships, just 
such relationships as have been discussed here between 
the editor and the materials he has to work with, and 
between the editor and his readers. 

The Clash of Obligations.—There is in the edi- 
torial world, as in any, the conflict of obligations which 
renders living the complex matter that it is. The 
personal interests of the editor himself seem to con- 
flict sometimes with the interests of the paper, or the 
interests of the paper conflict with those of the great 
unorganized mass of people for whom the newspaper 
should be a champion. These and other similar clashes 
of interest will afford the editor plenty of exercise 
trying to catch up with the Greatest Good to the 
Greatest Number after he has once succeeded in pick- 
ing it out from among the crowd of greater and lesser 
Goods. 

Without any intention of debating fine points or 
trying to settle questions on which doctors disagree, 
it is yet possible to describe the general aspects of 
editorial responsibility as developed in the experience 
of careful and yet “practical” journalists. 

230 


EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITY 


A Common Bugbear.—lIf the editor is not the 
owner of the paper, he has certain responsibilities to 
the owner, and out of this relationship grows a pos- 
sibility of conflict about which much has been said. 
American journalism has been condemned on the 
ground that it is common for editorial writers to feel 
compelled to write otherwise than according to their 
own convictions. By contrast, the standard of honor in 
English journalism is pointed out, according to which 
an editorial writer, who finds his own views divergent 
from those of the publisher, resigns his job and goes 
to some paper on which he is enabled to write with 
sincerity and freedom. All that need be said on this 
matter is to deny that conditions in our journalism 
are as bad as represented—and they are growing better. 
The attitude of a great newspaper on some question of 
the hour will not, of course, fit exactly the opinions 
of all its editorial writers* but the individual writer 
can, to a large extent, choose the subjects which he is 
to discuss, thereby avoiding those which he feels he 
could not conscientiously present in accordance with 
the paper’s policy. 

The general attitude of any great newspaper is well 
understood and no one need commit the error of 
affiliating himself with a paper: having a point of 
view opposite to his own, though, to be sure, no 
editor will find a great paper that maintains views 
exactly the same as his own, any more than he will 
find a church offering such a complete harmony—or 
a political party. Affiliations in life are almost always 

231 


THE EDITORIAL 


established on the principle of approximate, rather 
than perfect, agreement. 

In connection with the reference made to English 
journalism, it is interesting to find a historian of the 
English press, J. D. Symon, defending editorial writers 
who, “acute in discovering the feeling of the masses, 
become advocates, able special pleaders, who can with 
equal versatility maintain the worse or the better 
cause at will. The barrister does not suffer in character 
by being able to maintain the side for which he is 
briefed. It is not a question of personal conviction. 
The newspaper, so far as editorial opinion goes, 
remains impersonal, and the private convictions of the 
special pleader have nothing to do with the case.” 

It is not to be denied, however, that instances are 
not wanting in which publishers, either in furtherance 
of their own. views or of their social, political, or 
financial interests, make demands on their editorial 
writers both disagreeable and humiliating. Editors 
continue to compromise themselves by working for 
such publishers, just as lawyers continue to comprom- 
ise themselves by taking such clients. But in the case 
of bad journalism, the remedy is much easier to apply 
because the readers always have the remedy in their 
own hands. For this reason, even in the face of fre- 
quent disquieting revelations, it is possible to be opti- 
mistic as to the future of metropolitan journalism in 
America. 

The Professional Obligation.—The responsibility 
which lies closest to the editor—of the five-column 
weekly or of the great daily—grows out of what may 

232 


POLEORIALARESPONSIBIEITY 


be called his duty to himself as an editor and to his 
profession, the profession of journalism. 

His duty to himself is of the same character and 
importance as any man’s duty to himself. It needs 
no elucidation here. In the light of what has been 
said under the preceding topic, it is assumed that an 
important part of his duty to himself is to write as he 
believes. This is not only a duty but a source of power 
in writing. 

The editor owes it to his profession, as well as to 
himself, to work out a settled philosophy of life, that 
is, to establish adequate personal and professional 
principles of action which mark his course as a man 
and as a writer. Such, for example, is the rule of 
action which the editor adopts as to using personal 
attack in his writings. Will he attack personally the 
private individual? a competitor? a man in public life? 
an official ’—any or all or none? If he uses personal 
attack, will he direct it at his opponent’s personal 
appearance? private life? abilities? acts? ideals >—any, 
all or none? 

Or, as another example, how will the editor meet 
outside influences brought to bear upon him—influ- 
ences involving money, or involving threats, or in- 
volving friendships? A multitude of such tests will 
be put to the editor. His method of meeting them 
will reveal his sense of responsibility to himself and 
his profession. 

A Newspaper Has Rights.—Next in its close per- 
sonal relationships to the editor himself, is his respon- 
sibility to his newspaper as an institution, enjoying 

233 


THE EDITORIAL 


certain rights which even its editor is bound to respect. 
These things might be described as the newspaper’s 
rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of usefulness. 
Life, meaning not merely continued existence, but 
maintenance of its health, requiring that the editor 
ponder deeply the sources of newspaper influence, and 
of a normal growth in strength and prestige. Liberty, 
necessitating reasonable independence in performing 
its functions, such as depends on resistance to attempts 
at domination by advertisers. Pursuit of usefulness; 
doing well those things which a newspaper can do in 
justifying its existence as an institution; seeking its 
ends with dynamic intensity; but never entering an 
editorial campaign until all phases of the engagement 
have been thought out: the chances for defeat or 
victory measured carefully; account taken of those 
who must be converted or placated, and of those who 
must be defeated; decision made as to whether edu- 
cational methods, or quicker and more forceful direct 
attack, are to be used; determination of the most 
promising methods in editorial strategy, and the 
paper’s attitude in victory or defeat. In other words, 
a newspaper has a right to conservation of its interests 
and development of its powers. 

A broader phase of this matter is the editor’s respon- 
sibility to his craft, to the profession of journalism. If 
an editor shows no interest in other editorial opinion 
and no respect for it, how can he be so ingenuous as 
to suppose that he is building in his readers’ minds 
respect for any editorial opinion. He is a strange 


234 


EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITY 


editor who seeks credit by acting as though he 
belonged to a class that is discreditable. 

The Implied Contract.—But the sense in which 
the expression, “editorial responsibility,” is commonly 
used refers chiefly to the editor’s responsibility to the 
community. As relationships here are multitudinous, 
so responsibility is very great. The editor is a party to 
an unwritten contract between the newspaper and the 
public. This contract recognizes that news and opinion 
are necessities of the community life as of political and 
social well-being generally; that the newspaper is, in 
effect, enjoying a franchise to deal in these necessities ; 
that extraordinary privileges of approach to the minds 
of the members of the community and a valuable gift 
of public confidence, have been bestowed. All of which 
explains the basis of the more and more common con- 
ception of the newspaper as being a quasi public utility 
under the same obligations to devote itself to the public 
interests as any public utility. Or it is a complex 
socializing manufactory whose product is information 
and whose chief by-product is good, sound public 
opinion; and it operates under a special charter in 
which the public is named as one of the incorporators. 
As this inevitable conclusion regarding the nature of 
the newspaper as an institution gains general accept- 
ance, the paper run according to the proprietor’s selfish 
interest alone will become an anachronism and finally 
a curiosity. 

Capitalistic Leanings.—Equally ridiculous, and 
much more dangerous, is the apparent sense of respon- 
sibility felt by some newspapers towards wealth. There 


235 


THE EDITORIAL 


is some ground for the phrase, “the capitalistic press.” 
It is not surprising that as the metropolitan newspaper 
has become financially great, it has come into the 
hands of men with the point of view of wealth. (James 
Gordon Bennett started the New York Herald with 
$500, in 1835. It would require a thousand times that 
much to start a daily paper in New York to-day). 
The remedy for the evil growing out of such a con- 
dition lies with the public, and in the past the public 
has not failed to apply the remedy in many notable 
instances. The newspaper which manifests failure to 
appreciate where its chief responsibility lies will, as a 
rule, find that the public is pointing its finger in the 
direction of the scrap pile. 

While president of the University of Minnesota, 
George E. Vincent declared: “The press is more than 
a business. It is a social service fundamental to the 
national life, exerting profound influence upon it. The 
men of the press must recognize the social nature of 
their task. If the press be a corporation, it is a public 
service corporation with all of the social responsibility 
that this implies. The American press reflects the life 
of all of us, and it affects the life of all of us. We must 
all share the common task of raising slowly, steadily, 
courageously this life to a higher level of truth, of 
justice, of good will. We, the people, make the press 
what it is. The press can help us to make it and all 
our national institutions more nearly what they should 
be.” 

Some of the most interesting phases of this respon- 
sibility of the newspaper to the public have to do with 

236 


EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITY 


other parts of the paper than the editorial page, and 
are matters for treatment in a work of broader scope 
than this, covering the entire field of newspaper prob- 
lems and policies. They include, on the side of the 
news, such questions as the possibility of a newpaper’s 
telling the truth, accuracy in details, sensationalism, 
the printing of crime and anti-social news, suppression 
of news, licensing reporters, the use of a black list; 
and on the side of advertising, such questions as clean 
advertising, guaranteed advertising, advertising serv- 
ice, free advertising, favors to large advertisers. 

Of the newspaper’s broader obligations, William 
Herbert Carruth, professor of comparative literatures 
in Leland Stanford University, has said: 


When the journalist shall acknowledge and confess his 
responsibility as an agent and educator of the public, and 
bind himself by as solemn an oath as that of Hippocrates, 
once, and unfortunately no longer, required of the physi- 
cian, to care religiously for the honor and welfare of 
those whom he serves, he will deserve to take his place 
where he belongs, beside the educator in the work of 
building up a great common consciousness for civic 
righteousness. 


From the point of view of the editorial column, the 
first principle of responsibility to the public covers the 
exercise of such homely virtues as fairness, honesty, 
cleanness, cheerfulness, charitableness, generosity, 
courageousness. Such virtues require no definition, 
and no supporting arguments. 

In the editorial column it is desirable service to the 


237 


THE EDITORIAL 


public to emphasize the significant things in the news . 
which are liable to be overlooked and the apparently 
little things which are in reality great. 

Some Community Services.—There are impor- 
tant community interests and activities which the edi- 
tor aware of his responsibilities can foster. Almost 
marvellous are some of the stories of community serv- 
ice rendered by newspapers small and great. 

No civic agency can do as much for the health of 
the community as can newspapers. Activities in this 
line take the direction sometimes of a health column 
in the paper, at other times, a campaign for efficiency 
in the city health department or adequate equipment 
for handling problems in sanitation, the care of con- 
tagious diseases, and inspection to discover need of 
preventative or curative measures. Not often is an 
editor’s courage and devotion to the public welfare 
more severely tested than when he is faced by the 
necessity of exposing and attacking bad conditions in 
his own town. What has been said of physical health 
applies equally to the moral health of the community. 

The editor is the one naturally and properly ap- 
proached for aid in financing relief and charitable 
undertakings. He responds as a matter of course. In- 
deed the proceeding becomes so much a matter of 
course that it seems as though the public forgets to 
give the newspaper any credit for its work. 

In educational affairs, intelligent support by the 
editor is invaluable. There are many fine school build- 
ings in every state which would not be standing 
except for the activity of newspapers in popularizing 


238 


EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITY 


the work of the schools and in stimulating and organiz- 
ing sentiment in favor of proper equipment. 

The editor can do much to interest his readers in 
recreation. A community to be healthy must know 
how to play. 

Cultivation of the public taste rests largely with the 
newspapers. In the first place, the editor will see to 
it that he approaches the problem with clean hands, 
by exemplifying good taste in the content and appear- 

ance of his own page and the paper as a whole. Pro- 
ceeding from this point, he creates what interest he 
can in good literature, for example, by occasional edi- 
torials on books that he himself has read; by hearty 
support of public libraries and by such remarks as he 
may feel like making on reading in general. 

In similar ways, the editor can promote appreciation 
of painting, architecture, music, and the drama. 

The so-called “service departments” containing ad- 
vice to readers on everything from beauty and matri- 
mony to golf and law may, if the editor so desires, be 
given a place in his page. In a large city paper, such 
departments are undeniably helpful to a considerable 
number of readers. | 

Once in a while an editor claims credit in a case 
like the following: “The writer has had the distinct 
satisfaction of aiding materially in ridding his city of 
one of its most baneful influences—a moral leper who 
belonged to half a dozen lodges and has always been 
a good fellow, with influential connections. There was 
a storm raised when he was shown up in the paper. 
He kept a store. His advertising ceased. When he 


239 


THE EDITORIAL 


hinted that it might be resumed ‘under certain condi- 
tions,’ he was told that his name in display type would 
be seen only in the headlines announcing his departure 
for jail or ‘parts unknown,’ but would not be tolerated 
in the advertising columns under any conditions. He 
sold his business and left town and his successor is a 
decent citizen.” 

Ex officio Town Salesman.—From the point of 
view of the town as a unit of population with a legi- 
timate ambiton to increase, the editor holds the im- 
portant position of salesman ev officio. Like any good 
salesman or advertising manager, he makes it a part 
of his business to improve the “commodity” as much as 
possible. Directions in which he may help do this 
have been suggested. He appreciates the fact that, to 
a prospective resident, a town or city is not a mere 
material thing, but it is a group of opportunities— 
services. He does not think of paving as so much 
brick or concrete to be measured in miles, but as so 
much convenience or opportunity for pleasure to the 
resident. 

The sales-editor will analyze his “article” and pre- 
sent its virtues to the possible “purchaser” with an 
eye to all the demands which such a purchaser can 
make. Possibly he finds that these relate to: (1) Edu- 
cational. advantages; (2) health conditions; (3) at- 
mosphere—beauty, historic interest, architecture, 
moral tone; (4) the people and the organizations they 
foster; (5) opportunities for recreation; (6) housing 
and shopping conditions; (7) accessibility and trans- 
portation facilities; (8) investment opportunities; (9) 

240 


POLTORIAL RESPONSIBILITY 


employment opportunities. Whatever they are, he 
makes a correct appraisement. He then visualizes 
clearly the prospective resident whom he can reach 
through his column, or, more important, whom he can 
reach through the home folks who get information, ap- 
preciation, and enthusiasm regarding the town from 
his editorials. Then he is ready for his work as sales- 
man-in-chief. 

Mixing in Politics—Most obvious of all the 
editor’s responsibilities to the public, is that of pro- 
moting good government, furthering the constructive 
work of society; helping to establish more firmly the 
principles of sound democracy. This editorial func- 
tion will call for all the courage and all the wisdom 
and all the diplomacy of which the editor is possessed. 
Too often his efforts are limited to attacking bad gov- 
ernment in the excitement of a political campaign. 
One of the most disconcerting facts about the political 
and civic offices of the newspapers of our day is that 
apparently their direct influence in a campaign is much 
less than should be expected. In many great munici- 
pal elections, newspaper support has seemed of little 
value to the candidate receiving it. Of course, it is 
utterly impracticable to measure the political influence 
of a newspaper. Logically it should be tremendously 
great. If it is not great, the explanation is to be sought 
not in the weakness of the newspaper as an institution, 
but in the failure of its proper functioning, due to hu- 
man incompetence or dereliction. 

The Broadest Responsibility—In its broadest 
aspect, the responsibility of the editor extends to so- 

241 


THE CE DITORIAL 


ciety as a whole and, in particular, to the legal require- 
ment which society has imposed upon the press. In 
America, this latter is not great. It requires only that 
the editor shall speak truth and from worthy motives. 
Statements of fact, or opinion, made with a proper 
sense of public obligation, except in the case of some 
specific prohibition, receive full protection under our 
laws. The editor’s responsibility to society as a whole 
is not different in kind from his responsibilty to his 
community. It becomes predominant in its authority 
when, for some reason, the sentiments of the com- 
munity are out of harmony with those of the country 
at large. A few such notable instance came to light 
during the World War and more than one newspaper 
received high recognition for fearlessly discharging 
its obligations to the country in the face of bitter an- 
tagonism from the most powerful element in its city. 

In the large city or in the small town, the editor 
often finds that keeping all his responsibilities in good 
repair adds something to the high cost of living. Ene- 
mies, irate subscribers, and social or political dis- 
favor sometimes help to swell the price of fearlessness 
and progressiveness. No careful editor boosts the 
price any more than necessary: he keeps it down to 
the minimum. But after he has paid it, and paid it 
as cheerfully as possible, he always finds that he has 
bought something worth having—self-respect and a 
good conscience. 

Must Not Overlook the Individual—Editors 
sometimes become so habituated to viewing people in 
the mass that they grow indifferent as to their respon- 

242 


EDITORIAL RESPONSIBILITY 


sibilities to the individual members of society. Charles 
H. Grasty, himself a publisher of large experience, has 
referred to this as a “serious blemish on our journal- 
ism.” Mr. Grasty believes that “in a general way, the 
press appreciates its obligations to the public interest. 
The average editor accepts in practice the principle 
of public trusteeship. Ideality is much more common 
in newspaper offices than is known or admitted by the 
layman,” but in spite of this fact “contempt for the 
rights of the individual” is not infrequently shown. 
For years Mr. Grasty printed on the editorial page 
of his Baltimore Sun a corrections column to which 
every person with a grievance had access. ‘““The edi- 
tor,’ he declares, “should be a gentleman profession- 
ally as well as personally.” 

Taking Off His Coat.—Finally, it is interesting to 
observe that the editor speaks with double authority 
who backs up his words with action. No editor can 
meet his responsibilities by mere writing. The country 
editor, especially, must do two-thirds of his preaching 
by participation in affairs. | 

William Allen White has thus described the editor’s 
contribution to the happiness of his town. He is 
speaking of the editor of the small paper; but what he 
says is true of any editor worthy of the name. 


He has given all his life to his town; he has spent 
thousands of dollars to promote its growth; he has watched 
every house on the town-site rise, and has made an item 
in his paper about it; he has written up the weddings 
of many of the grandmothers and grandfathers of the 
town; he has chronicled the birth of their children and 


243 


THE EDITORIALS 


children’s children. The old scrapbooks are filled with 
kind things that he has written. Old men and old women 
scan these wrinkled pages with eyes that have lost their 
luster, and on the rusty clippings pasted there fall many 
tears. In this book many a woman reads the little verse 
below the name of a child whom only she and God re- 
member. In some other scrapbook, a man, long since 
out of the current of life, reads the story of his little 
triumph in the world; in the family Bible is a clipping— 
yellow and crisp with years—that tells of a daughter’s 
wedding and the social glory that descended upon the 
house that one great day. 


And, to quote from Charles Moreau Harger on the 
same topic: 


The country editor of to-day is coming into his own. He 
asks fewer favors and brings more into the store of com- 
mon good. He does not ask eulogies nor does he resent 
fair criticisms; he is content to be judged by what he © 
is and what he has accomplished. As the leader of the 
hosts must hold his place by the consent of his followers, 
so must the town’s spokesman prove his worth. Closest 
to the people, nearest to their home life, its hopes and its 
aspirations, the country editor is at the foundation of 
journalism, 


CHAPTER GALT 


THE EDITOR'S ROUTINE AND READING 


While the organization of large newspaper offices 
varies considerably as to details, the main features are 
the same, and one of these is that the editor-in-chief 
stands next to the publisher in authority. His is the 
duty of directing the paper, according to the purposes 
and instructions of the owner. He may or may not 
write editorials himself. Sometimes he hires all the 
brains needed for that and uses his own on the diff- 
cult questions of policy. He is well paid, his salary 
rarely being less than $150 a week and sometimes 
going as high as $300. Mr. Brisbane’s fabulous salary 
is one of those exceptional facts that concerns the 
aspiring beginner about as much as the Presidency. 

The Man on a City Staff—The routine of the 
editorial writer is described by one who has had long 
and wide experience about as follows: 

The editorial writer submits to the editor every 
morning in conference a list of editorial topics which 
to him may seem available. The requisite number 
of these may be chosen, or, as has sometimes happened, 
all may be rejected and an entirely new set substituted, 
which he must handle with as much readiness as if 
they were of his own selection. Usually, however, 


245 


TRE se DItORTAL 


his list will contain the required number of acceptable 
topics. He finds it comparatively easy sailing when 
his subjects are before him and he is able to settle 
down to their treatment, for editorial writing is his 
trade or his art. He is, therefore, far along the road, 
so to speak, before he seemingly begins his day’s jour- 
ney. He has already mentally gone over his topics, 
consciously or subconsciously analyzed them. He has 
his premises, discussions and conclusions arranged, at 
least in outline. The rest is purely composition, and 
this is something to be dealt with as entirely sae 
from his subject. 

A half dozen writers contribute regularly to the 
editorial page. Some of these are represented on the 
page daily, others thrice, twice or once a week. All 
contribute more or less to other departments. All are 
subject to such assignments as the editor-in-chief may 
give them. Some prepare special articles on literary, 
political, economic, art, and other subjects. Some 
write on foreign topics. Some write reviews. It is 
intended that the work shall be so distributed as to 
bear equally on the editorial writing force. 

Accuracy of statement is a first essential. To achieve 
it, all necessary thought, time and care are taken. An 
editorial goes through this process : 

Subject is assigned in morning conference. 

Position to be taken is understood as office policy 
or indicated. 

The article is written. 

It is passed to the assistant editor. 

It goes to the editorial copy reader, whose business 

246 


THE EDITOR’S ROUTINE AND READING 


is to “catch” and correct any “slips” made by the © 
writer. 

Corrected proofs go to assistant editor, copy reader 
and writer. 

Corrections may be made by one or all. 

The writer may change form of construction or 
statement of fact, or he may improve or polish pas- 
sages, 

Revised proofs go to editor-in-chief. 

Editor-in-chief may order alterations, modifications, 
extensions, the rewriting of passages. 

Finally, a page proof is passed upon by editor-in- 
chief and assistant editor. 

There may be days, and even weeks, at a time, when 
no important changes are ordered ; many changes, how- 
ever, may be ordered in one day. 

The morning editorial conference frequently takes 
the form of a general discussion of affairs, the editor- 
in-chief leading, and from such discussions the edi- 
torial writers draw, directly or inferentially, the views 
of their superior, not only as they concern subjects 
of the day, but as they concern subjects that may 
come up for treatment at any time in the future. This 
is what might be called getting the ‘feel’ of the office. 
Thus do the traditions of the paper show the way to 
the treatment of the matter in hand. 

The editorial writer’s salary is better than that of 
the assistants in any of the business departments and 
better than that of reporters or copy readers. In some 
offices the ‘“‘star” reporter receives as much or more 


247 


THE EDITORIAL 


than editorial writers. They are paid all the way from 
$40 to $150 a week. 

They are able, as a rule, to work in more leisurely 
fashion than other writers for the paper though exi- 
gencies may require that copy be hastily written and 
fed, sheet by sheet, unrevised, to the compositors. 

In the Weekly Magazine Office.—The editorial 
pages of a weekly periodical rest upon much the same 
routine as has been described, though the time’ re- 
quirements are somewhat ameliorated and the work 
of members of the staff is more diversified. Mark 
Sullivan, editor of Collier's, in his foreword to “Na- 
tional Floodmarks,” a collection of Collier's editorials, 
describes the methods of work in that office as follows: 


The only rule there has ever been about the editorials 
in Collier's is that each should be the sincere expression 
of either a conviction or a mood. They have never been 
written to order. At no time have we felt that the death 
of the Akhoond of Swat or the fiscal policy of Siam must, 
willy-nilly, be written about. China becomes a republic, 
or may become an empire again; if the editorial writer 
is moved to the expression of something worth while on 
this transition, we have an editorial on it; if not, we let 
China alone and print an editorial on hollyhocks or on 
some other subject that the writer does happen to have 
an idea about. The poet De Vigny said: “The press is 
a mouth forced to be always open and always speaking. 
Hence it says a thousand things more than it has to say, 
and often wanders and exaggerates. It would be the same 
if an orator, yes, even Demosthenes himself, had to speak 
without interruption all the year round.” Probably De 
Vigny was thinking about the daily press; anyway, 

248 


THE EDITOR’S ROUTINE AND READING 


Collier’s theory has been, not to cover the world nor the 
week’s news, but to print editorials on subjects concern- 
ing which the writer has—or thinks he has—something 
to say. Of course the convictions have not always been 
consistent nor the moods permanent—for Collier’s is 
human. 


In the Small Office——In the country weekly 
newspaper office or that of the small daily, the routine 
of the editor as an editorial writer usually amounts 
to this: he writes editorials when he is not doing any- 
thing else. A multitude of duties in the front office, 
back office, and on the street, crowd upon him. Op- 
portunities to fritter away time are also plentiful. 
Sometimes he turns the editorial column over to a 
reporter. Sometimes he abolishes it. Oftentimes the 
thing that he needs to do to solve the difficulty is to 
adopt better business methods. The installation of a 
modern cost-finding and accounting system, in even the 
smallest office, is bound to result in a better editorial 
column, remote as the connection may seem to be. It 
will conserve the newspaper man’s time so that he can 
find an hour occasionally in which to be an editor, and 
it will make him more prosperous and therefore better 
able to hire help for the drudgery and release his mind 
for work that is worth his doing. 

Contrary to what might be expected, the editorial 
work in the typical small daily is more conscientiously 
done than in the typical weekly. 

A Word on Behalf of Relaxation.—A part of the 
editor’s routine—that is, one of the things that he does 
inevitably and periodically, if he is to keep his pro- 


249 


THE EDITORIAL 


ductive efficiency at the highest mark—is to “dust off 
his soul,’ as the editor of a sprightly periodical for 
newspaper writers, Pep, put it: 


We think it highly desirable that once in a while editors 
go out into a mental desert, and get a lot of the false 
odors of town out of their system. 

If ever were needed clear thinking leaders, clean think- 
ing leaders, it is now; and if editors are to do the job 
the public has a right to expect them to do—that is, in- 
struct and guide and protect, as well as amuse and inform 
—they must occasionally get out of touch with politicians, 
irate subscribers, their pet club, and the mill of office 
work that grinds all emotion and idealism and constructive 
thought out of editors about as fast as a No. 5 grinds out 
“must” copy fifteen minutes before press time. 

Vacations for most workers are merely play periods. 
Publishers and editors require something more than a 
play spell. 

They require a polishing of their mental faculties; they 
require the renewal of their moral sense of smell so 
that they will not be content to dwell in silence with a 
city muck heap. 

They need to brush out a lot of rubbish that has piled 
in their heads as well as in their desks and filing cabinets; 
and a period of solitary confinement with nature would 
help more than a little. 

The editor to-day who drifts with his town, who be- 
comes merely a calliope to the town political, social and 
business procession, who is merely a changer of money 
inside the temple instead of the keeper of the ark of the: 
covenant; such an editor is merely an animate cash reg- 
ister, and. any paper he manages is a simulacrum. Of 
which there are too many for the future of newspaperdom. 

250 


THE EDITOR'S ROUTINE. AND READING 


If you in any sense care for the high estate of the 
editor, an estate as high as that of the minister, or the 
judge, or the statesman, you will, this vacation season, 
spend some time in getting alone with yourself, and 
letting the old forces of nature remold you for your soul’s 
good. 

The man who will live with a mountain and a trout 
stream, alone, for three weeks cannot very well be a 
cheap assistant to the town gang of political wastrels; 
the man who watches the eternal stars, going their 
solemn rounds each night, from his blanket roll under 
the open sky, will return with more reverence for what 
is right, and less for what is expedient. 

And, if our guess is at all good, an awakened public 
conscience is daily making what is right, expedient. 

An editor, who spends his vacation tangoing with the 
seaside mob, is likely to return with about as much worth- 
while aspiration as have the other fat lounge lizards with 
whom he consorts at his club. 

Such a one is not an editor; he’s just another tired 
business man, kicking up a dust on the city treadmill. 


The Two Kinds of Books.—When a number of 
successful editors were asked what books the edi- 
torial writer should read, the majority of them pre- 
faced their answers by dividing books into two classes, 
after the manner of DeQuincey: those books which 
present information, and those which contain power ; 
or as one editor put it, “a book does one or both of 
two things: it supplies you with facts, definite in- 
formation, or it stimulates your imagination, builds up 
your power of original thought.” 

The Storehouse Shelf.—As to books of informa- 

251 


DHE VEDI DORA 


tion, the editor of any paper, no matter how small, 
needs, of course, a good dictionary, and a good en- 
cyclopedia. From this minimum, the limits of editorial 
libraries expand until, in the office of the large news- 
paper, are sometimes found libraries of several thou- 
sand volumes. Among the most used books of these 
larger libraries are the Year Books of the various 
countries, government reports, Who’s Who, Political 
Campaign Text Books, dictionaries of quotations, con- 
cordances, Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, 
atlases, almanacs, histories, financial and commercial 
reports, comprehensive books on each of the sciences, 
census reports, Encyclopedia of Social Reform, mem- 
oirs of great Americans, dictionary of authors, treaties 
of the United States, constitutional law*of the United 
States, books on international law, Outlines of Ameri- 
can Politics, History of the Presidency. , 
Inspirational Books.—As to the other part of ce 
editor’s library—the books from which he acquires 
inspiration and increase in his power of expression,— 
there is as little agreement as one would expect. 
According to one, “The Bible is the greatest book for 
the editor, because it has in it, more than any other 
book, the story of human thought from the day when 
Job humbled himself in the dust talking about Behe- 
moth and Leviathan and Arcturus, to the almost mod- 
ern day when Paul, the aristocrat Jewish nobleman of 
Tarsus, preached salavation based on unselfishness.” 
Next to the Bible, Shakspere receives the most fre- 
quent mention. “An editor should have a great deal of 
Shakspere in his head, and all of Shakspere at his 
252 


THE EDITOR’S ROUTINE AND READING 


elbow. He should read Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, 
and the Tempest, at least once a year. As a man 
knows more, Shakspere tells him more.” 

Another prominent editor reports that the outside 
reading which he most values is poetry and such 
writers as Burke, Macaulay, and Lowell. 

Still another editor finds inspiration in reading the 
lives of men preeminent in journalism. He recom- 
mends Dasent’s “Delane” and Parton’s “Greeley.” 

To continue the enumeration of books preferred by 
different editors would merely add unnecessarily to the 
demonstration of the fact that “it is all a matter of 
taste.” The important thing is that no editor over- 
look the fact that if he is using books merely as a 
source of information, he is utilizing only half their 
value. If he can only find it, there is a book—many 
books—which will have for him helpful tonic qualities 
—without any bad after-effects. 

Charles R. Miller, editor of the New York Times, 
thus sums up the objects to be sought by reading and 
study: “An editor should have a good working knowl- 
edge of history and politics. He should prepare him- 
self for the interpretation of history, the philosophy 
of history, the correlation of events that may be widely 
separated. For some eruption of the day he should 
be able to apply Guizot and Buckle from a head stored 
like a library for ready reference; he should be on 
terms of familiarity with John Marshall, Justice Peck- 
ham, and Chief Justice White; in general he should 
read much, talk much, travel when he can.” 


CHAPTER XIII 


ANALYZING EDITORIALS 


Benefit, not only to a beginner, but also to a prac- 
ticed writer, will come from analysis of the methods 
and style of successful editorial writers. To dis- 
cover just how another makes himself understood, 
how he maintains interest, how he injects the pictorial 
element, how he employs historical or literary allu- 
sions, how he wins the sympathy and confidence of the 
reader, how he promotes the spirit of tolerance, how 
he introduces a whimsical, satirical, or a sterner tone— 
to discover the secret of these effects in another’s writ- 
ing is to acquire resourcefulness in one’s own. 

Ten Tests of an Editorial—The following is a 
recapitulation, in outline form, of some of the points 
that have been made in the preceding chapters. If the 
student will select an editorial and examine it from 
these ten points of view, he will have made a rather 
complete analysis of it. Such study should assist self- 
criticism and consequent improvement in writing. 

A good editorial will stand up well when tested as to. 
its adequate meeting of requirements involved in the 
following ten phases: 


1. Appearance. 
a. Column width and typography. 


254 


ANALYZING EDITORIALS 


Daeeength, 
c. Paragraphing. 
2. Theme. 
a. Scope: local, state, national, world, gen- 
eral. 


b. Field: politics, commerce, persons, etc. 

c. Interest: timeliness, significance, human 
interest, unusualness, etc. 

3. Materials. | 

a. Nature: events, thoughts, feelings, values, 
Che. | 

b. Sources: observation, reflection, reading, 
conversation, experience. 

4. Organization. 

a. The beginning: direct or indirect ap- 
proach to subject, slant on subject, at- 
tention value for reader, first impres- 
sion, etc. 

b. The end: formal or informal, climactic or 
uniform, abrupt or polished, weak or 
forceful, adaptation to reader and sub- 
ject and purpose. Last impression ef- 
fective or not. 

c. Arrangement of constituents, padded or 
reduced to essentials. | 

d. Adaptation to reader’s information or 
ignorance, interest or indifference, re- 
ceptivity or prejudice. 

e. Heading: relation to theme, adaptation to 
reader, form and effectiveness. 


259 


THE EDITORIAL 


5. Rhetorical form. 
a. Description. 
b. Narration. 
c. Exposition. 
d.. Argument. 
e. Persuasion. 


a. Qualities: pictorial or commonplace, con- 


2 ede OSI 


Gar UrDosc. 


cise or wordy, clear or involved, force- 
ful or weak, spirited or dull, original 
or stereotyped, affected or sincere, en- 
riched or plain, trenchant or smooth, 
sentimental or gay, refined or crude, 
subtle or frank. Giving reader sense 
of discovery. 


b. Unity or consistency throughout. 


a.. Fair or shrewd, caustic or generous, dic- 


tatorial or rational, lofty or demo- 
cratic, philosophical or intense, digni- 
fied or simple, intimate or formal, 
whimsical or serious, ironical, satirical, 
sarcastic, abusive. 


a. To inform. 
b. To interpret. 
c. To convince. 
d. To influence. 
e. To entertain. 
9g. Moral qualities and sense of editorial responsi- 


bility. 


256 


ANALYZING EDITORIALS 


10. Value, judged by requirements that it be seen, 
-read, believed, adopted, and benefit the com- 
munity, the state, or society at large. 


Published Collections of Editorials Several 
volumes of editorials are available for those who 
would rather consult them than the current issues or 
bound volumes of publications. Among them are: 

“Casual Essays of the Sun,’ published in 1905 by 
Robert G. Cooke, New York. Contains some two hun- 
dred editorial articles on many subjects, “clothed with 
the philosophy of the bright side of things.” 

“National Floodmarks,” published in 1915 by George 
H. Doran Company. Contains three hundred or more 
“week-by-week observations on American life,” writ- 
ten by Mark Sullivan, the editor of Collier's, and 
members of his staff. 

“Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers,” Albert- 
son Publishing Company, New York, 1906. More 
than one hundred examples of Arthur Brisbane’s 
earlier work. 

“Fifty Years of American Idealism,’ Houghton 
Mifflin Company, 1915, edited by Gustav Pollak. A 
collection of editorials from the New York Nation. 

Better to Go to Original Sources.—Few complete 
editorials are reprinted in this present volume. A 
faithful attempt has been made to exemplify principles 
by the minimum amount of quotation. A set of models 
may best be made up by each writer for himself. The 
newspapers and periodicals of any day in the year 
afford abundant material. 


257 


INDEX 


Allusions, historical and 
literary, 144-148, 149, 
195, 196 


American editors, 6 

Analyzing editorials, 254- 
257 

Antagonism, disarming of, 
105 

Aphorism, I91 

Appearance, typographical, 
212 

Argument in editorials, 78- 
84 


Bennett, James Gordon, 7 
Bigelow, John, 7 
Bookkeeping the news, 48 
Books, two kinds of, 251 
Bowles, Samuel, 7 
Brisbane, Arthur, II 
Bryant, William Cullen, 6, 
162 


Cafeteria methods, 223 

Capitalistic press, the so- 
called, 235 

Carruth, William Herbert, 

. 237 

Cartoons, as editorials, 226 

Cobbett, William, 4 


Coleman, William, 6 


Collections of editorials, 
published, 257 
Columnists, the, 203-211; 


aims and methods of, 
208; materials used by, 
209-211 

“Colyums,” spicy titles of, 
205 


Commonplaceness, _ effect 
of, 171 

Communications, column 
for, 227-228 

Community service, 238- 
240 


Country weekly, editorial 
work on the, 249 


Dana, Charles A., 7 
Delane, J. T., 4 
Development of the edi- 
torial column, I-13 
Dickens, Charles, 4 
Discussion, continuity in, 


56 


Editorial and news story, 
the, 43-47 

Editorial column, develop- 
ment of the, 1-13 


259 


INDEX 


Editorializing news, 11 

Editorial, lost confidence in 
the, 15 

Editorial page, cafeteria 
method in, 223; position 
of, 220; the ideal, 219; 
types of, 221 

Editorials, analysis of, 254- 
257; attention paid to, 
222-223; length of, 217; 
published collection of, 
257; scope of, 57, 58 

Editorials, types of, 62-97; 
argumentative, 78-84 ; 
general type of, 93-97; 
informative, 62-66; inter- 
pretative, 66-78; persua- 
sive, &5, 92; types of, 
illustrated, 97, 98 

Editorial, ten tests of an, 
254 

Editorial, the, 9-132; begin- 
ning of, 104; body of, 
132; chief criticisms of, 
16-19; ending of, 123; 
golden age of, 7; impor- 
tance of, 22-26; modern 
development of, 9; the 
signed, 12; superficial 
classification of, 99 

Editorial work, in the mag- 
azine office, 248; in the 
metropolitan office, 245- 
247; in the small office, 
249 

Editorial work, routine of, 
245 


Editor-in-chief, salary of, 
245 

Editor, the, 2-49; false atti- 
tude of, 20-21; in Amer- 
ica and in England, 2, 6; 
personal, the, 9; prestige 
of, 34-35; reading habits 
of, 49 

English editors, 2 

English newspapers, 
torials in, 140 

Entertainment in editorials, 
62-66 | 

Exaggeration, 
190 

Experience, importance of, 
51 


edi- 


humor in, 


Fitch, George, 226 
Frankenstein, the, 196 


Gladden, Dr. Washington, 
220 
Godkin, E. L., 7 


Grasty, Charles H., 140, 
144 

Greeley, Horace, 7, 160, 
161, 162 


Heading, choice of, 138; 
the editorial, 213 

Hearst, W. R., II 

Homily, 192 

House, J. E., 205 


260 


INDEX 


If’s, editorial, 39-41 


Imagination, part played 
by, 144 

Imitation, value of, 180, 
181 


Incongruity, humor in, 190 

Informational sources, 251 

Information in editorials, 
62-66 

Innuendo, 152, 194 

Inspiration from books, 252 

Interpretative editorials, 
66-78 

Invective, 160 

Inventory, taking an, 39-41 

Irony, 155, 193 


Journalism, yellow, I1 
London Times, 4 


Magazine, routine in office 
of, 248 

Magazines, editorials in, 27 
Marquis, Don, 209 

Martin, E. S., 141 
Materials, selection of, 54 
Medill, Joseph, 7 
Metaphor, 191, 199 


News in early papers, I 
Newspapers, essentials of 
strong, 36-38 
Newspapers, rights of, 233 
Northcliffe, Lord, 4 


Obligation, the professional, 
232 


261 


Obligations, clash of, 230 
Observation, importance of, 


Organization, first steps in, 
103; a clinic in, 133; fac- 
tors in, 102, 255 

Owner, responsibility to, 
231 


Paradox, 193 

Paragraphers, good _ sub- 
jects for, 183; methods 
used by, 199-203 

Paragraphs, 136-199; con- 
densation in, 184; length 
of, 136, 137; placing of, 
187; points of excellence 
in, 188; the hortatory, 
198; value of, 186 

Pathos, 167-169 

Persuasion in 
85-92 

Persuasive editorial, ending 
of the, 127 

Philosophy, homemade, 198 

Platitude, the, 199 

Policies, inside, 104; pur- 
suance of, 56 

Politics, mixing in, 241 

Proverbs, distorted, 193 

Public mind, the, 33 

Public opinion, the mystery 
of, 32 

Public, relation of the, 103, 
104; the editor’s, 30 

Puns, 191 


editorials, 


INDEX 


Quotation, modified, 192 


Raymond, Henry J., 7 

Readers, consideration of, 
59; 60 

Readers’ interests, tabulat- 
ing, 52, 53 

Reading habits of editors, 
49 

Reading, objects of, 253 

Reiteration, use of, 181 

Relaxation, a word for, 249 

Reporter’s work and edi- 
tor’s, the, 42-43 

Responsibility of the editor, 
230-244; community af- 
fairs, in, 238, 239; indi- 
vidual, to the, 242; his 
newspaper, to, 233; his 
profession, to, 232; owner 
of the paper, to the, 231; 
politics, in, 241; public, 
to the, 235; society as a 
whole, to, 241; town 
salesman, as, 248 

Revolutionary period, edi- 
torial in the, 6 

Ridicule, 158 

Salesmanship, a lesson 
from, 102 

Sarcasm, 157 

Satire, 152, 195 

Self-expression, 180 

Sentiment, 56, 57 

Service to the community, 
238-240 


Society, editor’s responsi- 
bility to, 241 

Style, 141-176; concrete- 
ness in, 144; dictatorial, 
169; interest value of, 
141; pictorial quality in, 
144-166; the “mega- 
phone,” 176; minimum 
requirements of, 143; 
sharp weapons of, I51 

Subjects, variety of, 54; 
local, national, etc., 54 

Sunday, variations on, 228 


Tests of an editorial, ten, 
254 

Timeliness, 54 

Town salesman, the editor, 
a, 240 

Type measurements, 215 

Typography of editorials, 
212-216 


Understatement, humor in, 
190 


Verse, newspaper, 228 
Vincent, George E., 236 


Watterson, Henry, 7, 10 

“We,” the editorial, 171 

White, William Allen, 164, 
165, 243 

Wide columns, use of, 215 

Writing, speed in, 179 


262 


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